Practical Science Gives Students Real Life Experience

Year 9 science students got the chance to experience real-life, practical science by dissecting a cow's eye.

The students learned about the parts of the eye and had to identify the sclera, tapetum, optic nerve, blindspot, vitreous humour, lens, iris and cornea. As part of the experiment, they had to find the whites (or sclera), the tough, outer covering of the eyeball and the fat and muscle surrounding the eye. They also had to find the covering over the front of the eye (the cornea). When the cow was alive, the cornea was clear. However, in the experiment, the cornea appeared cloudy. Many of the students found it interesting that they could hold and look through the cornea and see the iris, the coloured part of the eye, and they discovered that the pupil was the dark oval in the middle of the iris.