In fields like biology or medicine, the icky, disgusting details are often necessary. And what better way to learn about these details than to see the real thing?
This is where dissections come in handy.
Penn-Trafford’s zoology and anatomy classes, both taught by Patrick Konopka, allow students to participate in several dissections throughout the course of the school year.
In the zoology class, students dissected sharks on Feb. 15. This activity relates to the class’s current topic, class chondrichthyes (aka cartilaginous fish such as sharks and manta rays).
Although students had been working on this subject for about a week, the dissection finally gave them the opportunity to see what they learned with their own eyes.
Senior Dylan Jefairjian said that the dissection allowed him to have a “first hand experience of texture and locations of some organs.” Jefairjian said that dissections are a good educational tool, but added that they are “gross.”
Several of the sharks dissected in class even had baby sharks still inside of them. Konopka stated that lectures cannot prepare students for these unforeseen findings.
Konopka said that pictures and videos are not as close up as a dissection.
“Now you get to see how they feel, how thick they are, what the set up is,” he explained.
Konopka gave an example regarding the anatomy class’s recent dissection of a cow eye.
“Students can pull out the lense, pull out the iris and see it up close,” Konopka explained, adding that students can even get melanin on their fingers.
“This is what it really looks and feels like. [It is] never as neat and simple as pictures or diagrams.”
Konopka said that dissections are something that students choose what they get out of it.
“You can look at it and slice [it] in five minutes, or take time and see all of the parts.”
Maxwell Reese, Editor in Chief