Adaptation: Pick Three out of Four Sensory Experiments

This assignment called for me to pick three out of four sensory experiments to conduct and then record my reaction to each experiment. The three experiments I chose to conduct are number one- the sandpaper experiment, number three- the index cards and flashlight experiment and number four- the water in bowls experiment. While conducting each of these three experiments I was surprised by the results of each of them.

Experiment Number One: I rubbed my finger on the piece of coarse sandpaper and it felt very hard to my finger. After the two minute wait, I rubbed the same finger over the sand paper and found it to be softer than it felt the first time I ran my finger over it. The coarseness of the paper felt completely different the second time I ran my finger over it. I believe this is due to fact that I did rub the sandpaper with the same finger which was already desensitized by the first time I rubbed it on the sandpaper. This experiment is a sensory adaptation of touch in which our senses adjust to the level of stimulation we receive. This experiment shows that our senses can be as sensitive as they can be without being over loaded, which is why the second time my finger was rubber over the sandpaper it was less sensitive.

Experiment Number Three: I took the fifteen index cards and my flashlight into a dark room and placed all fifteen cards over the end of the flashlight as soon as I got into the room. At first I could not see any light so I started taking index cards off the end of the flashlight one at a time. When I got down to the fourth card I could see a little spot of light through the index cards. I waited a few minutes and the light was brighter through the cards so I started adding cards back in front of the flashlight every few minutes for the next fifteen minutes.

As my eyes adapted to the darkness I could continue to see the light through the cards. When I first went into the dark room from a bright room I was barely able to detect the light through the cards. The longer I stayed in the dark the light increased which made this an experiment of my sight sense adapting in the dark room for me to see the light through more and more cards the longer I stayed in the darkness.

Experiment Number Four: I filled 3 medium sized bowls with water. In the first bowl I put in tap water as hot as I could stand to put my hand into, in the second bowl I put very cold tap water and in the third I put an equal measure of the very hot tap water and the very cold tap water. I then put my right hand into the cold water and my left hand into the hot water and kept them there for three minutes. When the three minutes were up I transferred both hands into the bowl with the equal measure of both the hot and cold water. When I transferred my hands to the bowl with the mixture of hot and cold water, it felt like the temperatures also switched