No way.
Way!
Serious play is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation. Although Michelle Khine describes the motivator for her breakthrough as “impatience,” clearly her work had taken on the qualities of play when she dreamed up the idea of using Shrinky-Dinks right off the shelf of the local toy store as a stop-gap solution to a manufacturing problem in her new lab. A little Autocad, a laser printer, a few sheets of shrinky-dink material and yes, a hot toaster oven later, and Khine had created a microfluidic chip without using the $100,000 equipment everyone else relied on to manufacture them. And guess what? it works! Read about this clever young woman in MIT’s Technology Review.
Next, we want to see what she can do with Silly Putty.
Thanks to Monique Paturel for bringing this story to my attention on Facebook.
I’m going to try it. I’m going to see what I can make. Anybody have any suggestions? I’m not shooting for anything big like treating HIV; I’m thinking more like: heat my house, wash my clothes, cook my dinner, feed the dog.
Where can I buy shrinky dinks? Toys R Us? How about PDMS?
I, on the other hand, made many a Shrinky Dink and never once thought of inventing a new microfluidic chip.
Dear Ted,
Shrinky Dinks can be purchased at Target, online from Amazon.com, or if you want access to the FULL product line, inevitably it’s http://www.shrinkydinks.com. Please be sure notify us if you make any significant breakthroughs, scientific or otherwise.
Renzo Orsini says:
Michelle Khine is a kind of serendipitous sponge. A synthesizer of memory traces. What next for her and grooves in gelatinous things? How about gettings cells to align, maybe on a chemotactic gradient—how about nerve cells with a new dink material that forms grooves, but is fatty and biocompatible and could replace the myelin sheath for MS patients? Michelle would find the right stuff.
I love the way you sound so passionate about what you are writing. Keep up the great work!
Nice article.
please read about Bioengineers Succeed in Producing Plastics Without the Use of Fossil Fuels
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