Giant blood vessel immersive experience open Saturday in SF for Bay Area kids

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- On Saturday, families will have an opportunity to get a super-sized look into the human body in a free, immersive experience for all ages.

It's happening at the Mission Science Workshop in the Excelsior District in San Francisco from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

It's a giant portable blood vessel the size of a school bus, where kids can walk through to get an immersive look inside the human body.

"Where kids and students and families will be able to see how an artery works, with red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, all the different layers," said Sonia Gandiaga, executive director for the Mission Science Workshop said.

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It's a project has been in the works for more than a year now, with a little help from consultants and real medical professionals to make this vessel, as realistic as possible.

"In response to COVID, we just kind of wanted to go over the top. So we wanted to say, let's make this something really cool, a fully immersive experience that they can kind of go inside, and we're also going to make it really interactive," said Bart Evans, program director of the Mission Science Workshop said.

Evans came up with this vision since many underprivileged schools in the area don't have as much opportunity for hands-on, outside-the-classroom learning.

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"We mostly work with Title I schools, schools that are high need, they don't have a lot of resources," Garndiaga said.

Which is why they'll be bringing the field trips to them, at more than 90 schools across San Francisco and Oakland.

"And kids are really interested and they have very basic questions about how does breathing work? How is air different when it comes in and out? Things that an adult might take for granted," Evans said. "I think that it can feel icky sometimes too, so I think we're taking that icky and we're flipping it like whoa."

The Mission Science Workshop is located at 4458 Mission St. in San Francisco.

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