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Exploring the Senses
Go to the following Friday's In the Lab web site for instructions on the Two-point discrimination, Olfactory Fatigue and Visual preception.
RELATED LINKS:
A Sense of Taste - by David V. Smith and Robert F. Margolskee, Scientific American, March 2001.
Please post comments on the session in the forum below.
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
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Comments
Report Forms for Delivery Systems Exercise
Here is the link to the two report forms
for Scratch and sniff activity
for extract in containers of different wall thickness
Report Forms for Delivery Systems Exercise
Here is the link to the two report forms
for Scratch and sniff activity
for extract in containers of different wall thickness
Jelly beans and the senses
Okay, I haven't said very much lately. I guess not too much has struck a chord yet. I will say that the jelly bean experiment really got to me. Holding my nose I popped in a red bean and . . . tasted . . . nothing! Then I let go of my nose and tasted the cinnamon almost immediately. I pinched it off again and immediately lost all taste. I thought that was amazing. Letting go again, the taste returned.
I may use this during the year. It will be the only time I let the kids eat in the room. No food is ever allowed in a chem room or lab as far as I'm concerned.
The other 2 experiments I observed and helped with, but didn't take a turn. I think I got the point and may use a variation of the touch one for an "outside activity." The odor sensing one my group has modified and will use tomorrow. If it looks successful, I will be happy to use it, as well -- esp. since I am one of the developers.
Exploring the senses
Using The Senses To Develop Writing Skills
The writing/science activity that uses the five senses is most appopriate for my 4th graders. Children, as well as adults, can learn alot by using their senses to help associate words with their experiences. I can utilize it in my class as a group activity to facilitate cooperative learning. My Blog has a lesson on USING THE SENSES TO WRITE A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY.
Developing Writing Skills
Thank you. I almost forgot that your comments and Tola's talk did resonate with me. Joyce's comments also hit home. If we are to get students to metacognate, it helps for us to force them to write down their thoughts and observations. There are 3 reasons I can see:
1. It forces them to verbalize vague thoughts and feelings, which help them to understand them.
2. It prevents them from saying that they had other opinions as soon as they hear "the smart kid" give his views.
3. It will also help them to formulate arguments to support their position -- or realize, in trying to do so, that their position doesn't hold water. In that case they will endeavor to find a better one that they can support, thereby becoming "less wrong."
thoughts from the brain and behavior institute
brain washing and education
Senses
The exercises for the senses were very interesting and somewhat applicable to the early childhood classroom. Children could experience their extinguished sense of smell, just to learn if something smells for too long, our nose stops smelling it. They would also love the jelly bean activity. I am not sure about the calipers and touch, some children would be afraid of being touched. It might be better to just blindfold the children let them identify two-three items as they are placed on various places on their hands and arms are touched.
Young children are highly sensorially oriented and enjoy playing with their senses. I got a lot of nice ideas today, and was stimulated to expand the activities we use in the classroom. I think I need to create more open-ended inquiry activities for each sense. Tonight, I hope to brainstorm the ideas for these activities so as to strike while the iron is hot!
Wonderful, thought provoking day. Thanks very much.
thoughts for this morning
Sense of touch.
I've used a modified version of this activity in my Anatomy class and the students were very excited about it. In our own situation, we used tooth picks and we tested for sensitivity in the back/front of their palms, fingertips, back/front of the neck, arm, legs, upper and lower lips.
We found out that the lips and the fingertips are more sensitive than other parts we tested. My students were able to make two connections in real life situations to this.
1. Blind people are able to "see" with touch sensory receptors on their
fingetips.
2. Kissing on the lips is more sensitive and romantic than other part of the body.Exploring the senses
These activities remind me of the importance of starting any unit of study in biology with a kinesthetic experience.
The two point touch activity is one I have used sucessfully with Grade 7 bio students using a clay disk with dissecting pins. I like better the calipers as the tool. Students enjoy using tools that appear scientific, and the callipers are condusive to quantitative recording in their lab notebooks. Today, we examined the difference in sensory experience as the tester moves the calliper from middle of the lower inner arm to the wrist to the palm to the finger to finger tip. This would be a tighter experiment for the students than the more scattered approach I have used in the past. Once they appreciate the difference degrees of sensation in the arm, we could extend the activity to other parts of the body such as lips because of the discussion we could have about the adaptive advantage of having more sensitive areas of the body.
The activity with hot and cold touch on the arm would be difficult for my Grade 7 bio students. They would not be careful enough to avoid dripping water all over the arm to be able to get a clear diagram of temperature drawn on the arm with the different colors of pens. They would be able to record the sensation of temperatures as the tester moves along the inner arm from right below the elbow joint to the wrist to the palm to the finger tips.
The jelly bean activity to exemplify the cooperation among smell, taste, and vision would be very well received by Grade 7 bio students. I will continue to use the test comparing a slice of raw apple and a slice of raw bakig potato. Both are grainy in texture, and without sight and smell, "taste" the same. I would start with the potato-apple example which is very stark and then go to the jellybean example which is more subtle and more fun. The comparison of different types of chocolate would be effective with older high school or college age students.
Questioning olfaction differences between humans and animals
Students can explore sensitivity between different animals including humans.
sense of smell
Students enjoy investigating how we smell
Smell connections
All chocolate is chocolate?
For me, the smell of each piece of chocolate fused together with one another and I was only able to easily distinguish between the chocolates with the biggsest prevent this from occuring in the activity would be to give the pieces one at a time, providing enough time in between to make observations independent of the other pieces. After distributing the last piece, the observations can be organized in reference to one another instead of mistaking one for another.
Despite that little difficulty, I noticed myself:
Feeling the smooth, rich, texture and very milky taste of the 1st
Feeling the moist, milky taste of the 2nd
Tasting the dark and semi-milky taste of the 3rd
Flinching to number 4, which I felt was the most bitter piece of extra dark chocolate
Not flinching to the 5th, which is suppose to be the most intense piece, because it only had a hint of the extreme chocolate. The 5th also felt very dry
Chocolate in the morning
The actvity involved the tasting of five different types of chocolate. This was a good choice for adults who would be familiar with the experience of tasting chocolate in food.
lightest in
color
light
color
dark
color
darkest
color
dark color
like #4
Smoothest
feeling in
mouth
much less
smooth
not at
all smooth
grainy feeling
in mouth
soft to
the bite
soft to
the bite
harder to bite
and dense
complex complex less purer purest
flavor flavor complex flavor flavor
Exploring The Senses
Number 1 chocolate gave me a smooth and mellow sensation when I bit into it.
I wanted to have more and more of it.
Number 2 chocolate tasted somewhat bitter. It wasn't a pleasant taste.
Number 3 chocolate tasted a bit more stronger than Number 2 and I didn't think it was pleasant to the taste.
Number 4 chocolate was super bitter and it was the most unpleasant taste for me. It tasted like coffee without the cream and sugar that I drink at a fast food restaurant. Yuk!
Describing the taste of chocolate
Variety of Chocolates
#1 tastes sweet and creamy, regular creamy chocolate
#2 tastes sweet and milky. I could also taste buttermilk in it.
#3 is sweet in the beginning but with a slightly bitter after taste. I could taste raw cocoa in it.
#4 is just bitter, no taste of sugar but it has an after taste that is like alcohol.
#5 is strongly bitter, has a strong residual taste too and is mouth watery.
Tola
Exploring the senses
#1 sweet, milk chocolate
#2 slightly bitter, dark chocolate
#3 more bitter
#4 very bitter
The Senses.
1. 1. Smell: Ferment Taste: Yoghurt
2. 2. Smell: Not too evident Taste: Sweet/Creamy
3. 3. Smell: Not too evident Taste: Sour/bitter after taste
4. 4. Smell: Not too evident Taste: Bitter/Creamy
5. 5. Smell: Alcohol Taste: Bitter/sharp
Exploring The Senses
Number 1 chocolate gave me a smooth and mellow sensation when I bit into it.
I wanted to have more and more of it.
Number 2 chocolate tasted somewhat bitter. It wasn't a pleasant taste.
Number 3 chocolate tasted a bit more stronger than Number 2 and I didn't think it was pleasant to the taste.
Number 4 chocolate was super bitter and it was the most unpleasant taste for me. It tasted like coffee without the cream and sugar that I drink at a fast food restaurant. Yuk!
Describing Chocolate
Here are some words for describing chocolate:
sweet intense deep euphoric fragrant bitter intense
medicinal smooth relaxing bodied light heavy important
intoxicating waxy stimulating adhesive divine brown
light dark
Thanks, Teresa
The 4 chocolates
#1 Hershey's milk: smoothe, flavorful, light
#2 Also practically milk choc, but with another taste that I didn't find enjoyable.
#3 Dark choc, good but not so good as hershey's special dark or the Venezuelan 60% choc
#4 Very dark w/ high cacao % (above 72%, but it tastes like there is some added flavor, perhaps a light fruit flavor like peach or papaya or mango.
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