Adaptation 2 - Adaptation and Our Senses

Adaptation 2

Adaptation and Our Senses

Adaptation is when you have continuous stimuli to one or more of your senses. Smell, touch, taste and hearing become less sensitive to the stimulus. An example of this would be in the case of your first diaper change of a strong involvement of a bowel movement. It smells putrid. However, in a few seconds your sense of smell decreases and the odor becomes less offensive. This is adaptation at its best.

Our sense of smell happens when molecules mix with air. A variety of diseases can affect your olfactory system or sense of smell. Carbon monoxide molecules do not mix with air very well that is why we are unable to smell it. It is odorless. If it did mix with air many people would not die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Our vision is a process that involves the reception of electromagnetic waves by visual receptor cells (Davis, p. 91). It involves the cornea, aqueous humor, pupil, lense, retina and other parts of the eye. For people with color blindness or color deficiency, the cones of the eye are involved.

Audition or hearing is due to sound waves. Sound waves occur by flowing air. Objects that vibrate cause air molecules to move, and the movements of these molecules make up sound waves (Davis, p. 101). Sound waves include wavelength, intensity, and timbre. Sound waves flow down the ear canal which in turn reacts with the rest of the inner ear.

Taste happens due to the tongue and papillae. Papillae are taste buds. Taste happens when liquid, (or even saliva), react with dry food. This also happens with moist food. Hence, when you are eating a cracker the first taste sensation you get is bland and dry. However, once your saliva mixes with the cracker, the cracker becomes tasty.

We touch through nerve endings. If our nervous system is not working properly

Adaptation 3 we have no sense of touch. Adaptation may effect the sensation of touch by the overreacting to a stimulus. The following experiments will demonstrate our adaptation to our senses.

First when mixing a glass of sugar water and swishing it in your mouth, then spitting it out and follow it by a sip of tap water your sense of taste is affected. My boyfriend and I did this experiment and concluded to different things. He stated that he tasted chlorine. I on the other hand, first lost