The SensesHow do we

experience daily living through our

senses?

The Eye The Ear

The Hand The Nose

The Tongue

A Baby is Born

When a baby is born he opens his eyes first. The baby sees the world for the first time. The baby then hears all the commotion around him. Then, the baby feels the doctor hold him/ her. The baby then smells the new world around him/her. When the baby gets home, the mom or dad feeds him/her baby food.

SightWhen light rays pass through your pupil, the muscle

called the iris makes the size of the pupil change depending on the amount of light that’s available. You may have noticed this with your own eye if you have looked at it closely in a mirror. If there is too much light, your pupil will shrink to limit the number of light rays that enter. Likewise, if there is very little light available, the pupil will enlarge to let in as many light rays as it can.

Just behind the pupil is the lens and it focuses the image through a jelly-like substance called the vitreous humor onto the back surface of the eyeball, called the retina.

The retina, which is the size of your thumbnail, is filled with approximately 150 million light sensitive cells called rods and cones. Rods identify shapes and work best in dim light. Cones on the other hand, identify color and work best in bright light. Both of these types of cells then send the information to the brain by way of the optic nerve.

Hearing Story

Walking in the park you hear birds chirping, kids screaming, people talking and even twigs breaking. At home you can listen to TV and watch your favorite TV shows and also listen to music. Beep beep beep! When you wake up in the morning the sound of the alarm wakes you up you can go to school. Also when you go to school you LISTEN to you teacher and also to you friends then you hear of the excitement of when it is time to go home

Hearing

The ear is broken into 3 sections the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear

Outer ear – has the pinna and the external canal

Middle ear – has bones to keep things from going into your ear and these bones are called , The hammer, Anvil, and the stirrup and these 3 bones are the smallest bones in the bones.

Inner ear – has the cochlea which has fluid in it that maintains your balance

- How you hear-

In humans and other vertebrates, hearing is performed mainly by the auditory system vibrations are detected by the ear and translated into nerve impulses that are perceived by the brain.

You are riding your bike. You can feel the cool wind on your face. Then, all of a sudden, you crash into a tree! You scrape your knee and bite your tongue. Ouch!!!!! The injury on your knee is much worse, but the one on your tongue hurts much more. Why?

This is because you have more touch receptors in your tongue then in your knee. Different parts of the body have different amounts of touch receptors. We have receptors for temperature, pain pressure, and much more. Without these receptors, it would be very hard to do our everyday activities. You could get burned alive without even knowing it!

Touch Story

TouchUnlike your other senses, this sense is located all over your body. But,

your main touch organ is your skin. Our skin acts as a protective covering between our internal body organs and the outside world. Also the skin and our sense of touch, we wouldn’t be able to function in our daily lives. Without our sense of touch, it would not hurt when you cut yourself, and you would not know to put a bandage on it, and it could get infected. It could even led to blood disease.

When you touch something, the information of touch is carried by the nerve cells to the spinal cord. Then, the message is moved to the brain. The brain sends signals to the body that tell it what to do. For example, suppose you touch a cup of hot chocolate. Sensory nerves send the information of heat to the spinal cord. The spinal cord sends the message to the brain. The brain tells the muscles in your arm to move away from the heat. If you could not feel the heat or the pain, your body would get hurt very easily. The huge network of touch receptors in the skin is known as the somatosensory system. This system is responsible for all the sensations we feel- hot, cold, smooth, rough, pressure, tickle, itch, pain, vibration, and more.

Within the somatosensory system, there are four types of touch receptors: mechanoreceptors, thermo receptors, pain receptors, and proprioceptors.

Taste Story

• It was lunchtime. I was very hungry because I was working all morning. My dad was cooking hamburgers on the grill and I could smell it in my room. As I went to take my first bite, I dropped the burger quickly. I had burned my tongue! Even though it hurt, I still ate it. It was hard to taste the burger, so I had to imagine what all the flavors would taste like together. It is always good to blow on your food!!!

Taste

• You have five tastes: sweet, sour salty, bitter, and umami

• There are 50-100 taste cells representing each taste sensation

• The taste buds are associated with papilla, elevations on the tongue

• Taste buds are found on the roof of the mouth, tongue ad cheek

• You have about 10,000 taste buds• Stimulated by smell and texture • Taste belongs to chemical sensing system• This sense declines with age

Smell StoryOn an early Saturday morning, some people

go for a jog in the park. They can smell the dew on the grass and the blooming flowers. Shhhh. It’s raining ! Wow, during the spring you can even smell the rain. Time to go home. People make coffee or tea. They can smell the coffee or tea. Then , they relax for the rest of the day

Smell

Olfaction is the sense of smell. This sense has specialized sensory cells in the nasal cavity. Humans have 2 distinct olfactory systems: the main olfactory system, and the accessory olfactory system. The main olfactory system detects volatile chemicals and the accessory system detects fluid-phase chemicals. The chemicals which activate the olfactory system are called odors. They are low in concentration.

Fun Facts• Everyone has a unique sense of smell, except for identical twins• You can’t smell while you are asleep. You don’t smell coffee then wake

up; rather you wake up then smell coffee• Girls have more taste buds than boys• Taste is the weakest of the five senses• The whole middle ear is no bigger than a M&M candy• The ear never stops working, even while you are asleep.• A newborn see the world upside down. It takes a while for the baby's

brain to learn to turn the picture right-side up.• If you only had one eye, everything would appear two-dimensional.

(This does not work just by closing one eye.)• The least sensitive part of your body is the middle of your back.• You have more pain nerve endings than any other type.

We use our senses in the simplest ways:such as eating a cupcake or smelling a flower.

A prickly cactus

Resources

• Science Textbook- Glencoe Science Voyages Level Green• American Natural History Museum-Brain Exhibit• http://library.thinkquest.org/3750/taste/taste.html• http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/Taste.html• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste• http://library.thinkquest.org/3750/smell/smell.html• http://yucky.discovery.com/flash/body/pg000150.html• http://idahoptv.org/dialogue4kids/season10/senses/facts.cfm• http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html• http://library.thinkquest.org/3750/touch/touch.html• http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/4356• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_%28sense%29• http://library.thinkquest.org/3750/hear/hear.html• http://www.umm.edu/imagepages/8684.htm•

Created By:

Katherine GangeTyler ScottJade SchoolcraftJustin RomanLarry Johnson