This Is Cool

A student tests heat/cold sensitivity by dipping a finger into containers of cold and warm water. Human sensory systems are highly adaptable. This activity demonstrates the process of sensory adaptation. Students investigate how the perception of temperature changes under three separate conditions. They also relate the process of sensory adaptation to homeostasis.

Heads or Tails

Students try to identify heads or tails on a penny by touch.

Get the Point(s)

Students create a tool with 2 points (eraser and 2 pins with plastic heads, for example) and work in pairs to test the sensitivity of the skin on their arms, fingers, and hands.

Cool Tool

Using pencils, students explore touch and temperature sensitivity by finding cool receptors on their skin. Optional: Display Frames may be purchased at www.displays2go.com/product.asp?ID=520 or you may call to order them at 1-800-572-2194

Suggested keywords to use when describing your experiment and to find more information on this subject include: primary sensory cortex, cortical homunculus, thermoreceptor, and brain topographic map.

Blind Spot

Students move a test strip through their field of vision and determine at which position one of the symbols disappears, thus identifying their blind spot.

Welcome To Your Senses

Students explore the connection between the 5 senses and the brain by exercising each sense in short experiments.

Phantom Limb

Exploring how vision can alter self-perception

Chemotaxis using C.elegans

Students in grades 5-8 design, conduct, and analyze a controlled experiment testing the taste and/or smell preferences of the roundworm C. elegans.

Balance: The Ears Have It

Spinning a student around in a chair demonstrates how the vestibular system senses different types of circular motion.

Attention and Sensory Processing

Students will learn about how the brain changes information provided by the senses.

Senses