Rhea Mehta

Diego Martinez, Muno Ogelohwohor, Melisa Dindoruk

January 31st - February 8th

WOK - Sense Perception

The Perception of Smell and Taste

Progress Journals:

Jan 31st: Today we got introduced to the badge concept for TOK and it seems interesting. It seems a bit lengthy and complicated, but maybe it'll get better as we progress through it. As a group we read Chapter 5 - Sense Perception for our first badge project and came up with questions for an upcoming quiz the following class. Sense perception was pretty cool, especially the image illusions where you could see two objects in one picture.

Feb 2nd : Today we had the quiz and I walked into it thinking it would be common sense. After three retakes I still failed the quiz and Mr. Morrison advised me to re- read the chapter and take it again the following class.

Feb 6th: So on Thursday when we had class, I didn't score very well on any of the quizzes. During the weekend I studied and read Chapter 5 - sense perception and understood it better. According to my peers, we are doing a project on touch and sense perception. Since I was busy studying for the quiz, I haven't thoroughly talked to my classmates about what exactly we're doing in our project so after I finish journalling I will talk to my partners and understand how we're going to execute this project on sense perception to earn out badge. I hope I pass my quiz now yay. ..... I passed my quiz with a 10/10 after reading the chapter which was very beneficial. Our group finalized our project.

Feb 8th: We presented our project and PASSED!!!!! Overall it went really well, except we went a little overboard with time because we didn't previously rehearse. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed presenting and experimenting on classmates the different foods we made. It really enhanced our knowledge on sense perception and the distinction between smell and taste compared to touch.

Documentation:

Our Project: The groups essential question was: To what extent can we trust our senses of taste and smell without sight? We presented this question by bringing different foods with not an obvious fragrance for the classmates. Someone in the group blindfolded a volunteer and they were supposed to guess the food item after they smelled it and after they tasted it. Depending on the food, sometimes the answers to the two varied and sometimes were the same. We brought cheerios, dried mango, carrots, applesauce, and rice crackers. And each of them had a unique smell and taste that the students had to decipher without sight.

Outcome: The overall outcome of the project was very successful. We learned and came up with different facts. Smell is a sense people would choose to sacrifice. It has a low key status, yet humans are able to distinguish over 10,000 smells. Without taste and smell we wouldn’t be able to distinguish these foods. Our perception of taste can easily be influenced by our other senses (smell). A way to distinguish appearance from reality is to use a second sense to confirm it. If there is conflict between the senses that will create confusion. In the end we learned that without sight, the taste and smell of an object can really be beneficial. Without a certain sense, the other senses will work together to help out the mind.

Supplemental Materials:

Photos:

Videos:

Extension Proposals:

As stated in the textbook, some researchers believe for humans to have more than five senses. This video I found while researching talks about different senses that can be created.

This article I found while researching my topic talks about the impact of taste and smell. I thought this was interesting because it related to my topic for the Sense Perception badge.