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How do pregnancy tests work? – Tien Nguyen

Dig into the science of how modern over-the-counter pregnancy tests detect pregnancy with such a high rate of accuracy.

Over-the-counter pregnancy tests give potentially life-changing results with a pretty high rate of accuracy. But how do they work? Tien Nguyen explains how each test performs a scientifically rigorous, multi-stage experiment that goes from start to finish in the time that it’ll take you to watch this video.

Lesson by Tien Nguyen, animation by Andrew Foerster.

View full lesson:

https://www.pregnant.live

67 comments

    1. Bently Bubs

      @Pxrplegxal axthetic I don’t really know but I had it in 7th grade at the end of the year in science. Luckily it was in hybrid learning so it wasn’t to scary. My school doesn’t have honors science but my friends school in L.A does, and I don’t know if honors science learns it faster than normal people.

  1. apoch003

    As a person who designs these tests, you explain it well for a layman. However, there are errors in your description. The secondary antibody doesn’t attach a dye. Usually, the colour is produced by a colloidal gold particle (which is pink to red in colour), already attached to the second antibody. When the first zone is crossed, the urine interacts with the particle, but the particle is also moistened and begins to move WITH the urine sample and flow into the other zones where it is captured. You can confirm this by taking apart an unused pregnancy test, and a used one. You will see the “dye” (the gold particle) no longer is present in the first zone on the conjugate pad.

  2. Haeun Kim

    These are one of the things in which I was always curious about but never found time to actually search for the answer. It is really impressive how advanced ancient Egyptian technology were.

  3. Archan7

    Those tests can be insanely sensitive. I had such a low reading the doctors were astonished I knew I was pregnant 3 weeks in. My cycle was abnormal so I checked. The good news was short lived. I had lost the baby one week after finding out. It is also called a chemical pregnancy that early on (I’m fine now). Still. Dang. Red dye based pregnancy tests work best, btw.

  4. LearnWithBerry AFaithfulServant

    I have noticed that inventions from before were practical, easy to find and zero waste eco friendly materials. Just awesome. ? Hoping they will revive and teach us the ancient secrets . If only the great library weren’t burned down, we would have discover more ?

  5. NoThisIsPatrick

    I had a friend once who had a pregnancy scare in like freshman year. She was broke but also needed to take it before her parents found out. I gave her 20$, I hope she’s doin well. She was really nice

  6. KRI5H

    To all the men who don’t know why YouTube recommended this video to us. I want to say that it’s warning if we’ve got testicular cancer or not. So please watch it all and use pregnancy test to check if you’re positive or not.

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