When class ended Nov. 19 and 20, Mr. Ralph Holden’s, Social Studies, AP Psychology students walked out with strewed vision, activated taste buds and green tongues after testing their senses.
“Taste and perception is a big field in psychology, and I wanted to expose them to some of those things and hopefully they have an interest in it,” Mr. Holden said.
During the class’s Sensation Day, students participated in multiple experiments in order to explore the way they see and taste. This included wearing inverted goggles that shifted their vision 30 degrees to the left. While wearing them, students could play catch, walk the line and try and point in the middle of a circle.
“My favorite activity was the drunk goggles because they were so drastic, it was a huge change in perception. It related to what we are learning about in class, so it was interesting,” Eva Kimberly (12) said.
Other interactive activities included tasting foods, which allowed for students to see how flavor combines to make taste, and sensory reactions tricking individual eyesight with optical illusions. Another experiment included supertaster vs. nontaster, which was determined by the amount of papillae found in taste buds by painting one’s tongue green with food dye.
“Painting tongues, just from my perspective, is interesting for me because tongues are very different. It’s kind of like a fingerprint, everybody’s got a different one. It’s just kind of neat to see who’s a supertaster and who’s not,” Mr. Holden said.
The day was not only filled with fun experiments, but also learning outside of a book.
“It sort of brings a real life perspective into it, like you can read about it you can learn about stuff but actually getting to do it is a different sort of experience,” Anthony Rey (11) said.
While students all took something new away from the day, there is one thing that should stick forever.
“[I hope that they learn] that the brain is a pretty amazing thing,” Mr. Holden said.
