Body Worlds at The Leonardo in SLC

Last night a few of us that teach at WLJH and eat lunch together went downtown to see Body Worlds 3 at The Leonardo in downtown SLC. It was the first time I've hung out with these teachers (a math teacher, two science teachers and me- the English teacher) and we had a great time!

So, Body Worlds is really interesting. I had some slight trepedations about going-- real bodies on display? Are you kidding? Basically, people donate their bodies to Gunther Van Hagens so they can be plasticized (coated in resin) and then used for research and educational purposes.

The exhibits consist of real body parts, all sorts of body parts: whole people showing all their muscles, whole people showing off certain organs or groups of muscles, body parts (lungs, hearts, feet, hands, etc), slices of body parts (cross cuts of feet, hands, stomachs, torsos, brains, etc.).

What I thought was interesting were the cross sections because it was fascinating to see how all the organs fit together and to see all the connections between them. Seeing the whole bodies was also pretty interesting-- the shapes of the muscles and being able to see how they are connected to bones, tendons, etc. was really fascinating.

I really liked seeing the hands because it was easy to see how I was able to detach my tendon from my ring finger bone-- they are only connected in one point and it doesn't look all THAT secure so the pressure of having a ball hit my finger just right was enough to bascially pop the tendon off... quite interesting to see how it could happen.

One of the exhibits showed blood vessels from different parts (like the head) and that's all they showed-- blood vessels in the shape of the part they belonged to. My question was: how did they get rid of all the other parts to leave behind just the vessels in perfect shape?

The exhibit on fetuses was also really interesting. The disclaimer was appreciated--the collection had been sitting in different museums since 1920-- since there were real babies at different stages from 6 weeks to 33 weeks.

Overall, it was really interesting and not at all as disturbing as I thought it would be; mostly the bodies looked like plastic and so it was easy to think that it was all fake-- molded plastic, actually! I recommend this exhibit-- if you're into seeing body parts and how they work. It wasn't graphic and I do think it was tastefully done.