Monthly Archives: September 2016

7 Senses you aren’t taught in school

Everyone is taught in primary school about our 5 senses – hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste. But did you know we actually have several secret senses? You might not even be consciously aware of some of them, yet you use them everyday.

1. Balance

balance

Most of us manage to stay upright on two feet without falling over. You can probably stand on one leg or in a unusual stance for a period of time without toppling. This is all due to our sense of balance or equilibrioception. You balance is kept steady by the level of a fluid in the vestibular system in your inner ears.

Try testing your balance – Stand with your heels and back against a wall, then try to bend forwards. You’ll find you won’t be able to or you might fall over. When you bend forwards, your bum needs to stick out behind your feet in order to stabilise your centre of balance and stop you tipping over.

2. Heat

heat

When you’re near a fire, you’ll be able to feel the heat on your skin even though the fire isn’t touching you. This heat, as well as the absense of heat, is detected by thermoceptors in your skin.

Thermoception aids your body by giving the correct response when you start getting too hot or too cold. For example, when you’re cold the hairs on your arms will stand up, this response has evolved as it helps to trap air and give you an extra layer of insulation, although nowadays you can probably just put on another jumper.

3. Painpain

Nociception is the perception of pain throughout the body, whether it’s a physical cut or damage to an internal organ. It signals to your body that there is a potential threat and calls for an appropriate response.

4. Body Awareness

proprioception copy

This is a sense you will use all the time but you’ve probably never even thought about it. Also called, proprioception, it is the unconscious awareness of where your body parts are in space and in relation to the rest of you.

Test your proprioception by closing your eyes and touching your nose. Despite not being able to see your hand or nose, I bet you were pretty accurate in finding it?

5. Electrocreception

shark

This isn’t a sense that you have but lots of marine animals commonly use electrorecption to hunt for food. Sharks take advantage of the high conductivity of salt water, their electrorecptivity allows them to detect the electric signals produced by the activity of fish. Duck billed platypus, believe it or not, hunt in a similar way to sharks as they have thousands of electroreceptors in the mucous glands on their bills.

6. Echolocation

beluga

Bats are famous for their echolocation abilities. Although they aren’t completely blind, they hunt at night when it’s almost impossible to see and so echolocation evolved as an alternative to sight to help them navigate. They produce sounds so high pitched, we can’t usually hear them. This sound echos and bounces back to the bats, they use the returning noises to build up an internal image of their surroundings.

They’re not the only ones with this impressive talent, if you’ve seen Finding Dory, you may have noticed Bailey the Beluga Whale also uses echolocation. Belugas use a fatty deposit, known as a melon, on their head to target their sounds in different directions.

7. Magnetoreception

pidgeon

Many birds have the ability to detect magnet fields. This sense is called magnetoreception and is used to help birds find their way on long migrations. No one is quite sure how birds detect or see magnetic fields but there are hypotheses that suggest they use either a protein called cryptochrome or the highly magnetic compound, iron oxide.

Interestingly human eyes contain cryptochromes but we aren’t able to utilise the protein to detect a magnetic field.

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#TryThisTuesday: Floating Paperclip

floatingpaperclip

Can you make a paperclip float in water? Your standard metal paperclip isn’t very buoyant and as you would expect, tends to sink in water. But with just a piece of tissue paper and a pencil you can make a paperclip float…

  1. Place a small piece of tissue paper in the water so it floats
  2. Carefully put your paperclip on the tissue paper without you touching the paper
  3. Slowly use the pencil to push the paper down so it sinks – try not to touch the paperclip.
  4. You should be left with a floating paperclip – but is it really floating?


The science

Technically, the paperclip isn’t actually floating. It is held on the surface of the water by surface tension. Water molecules tend to attract one another and this forms a ‘skin’ on top where the water particles hold tightly together. This surface tension is strong enough to hold the paperclip. But if you poke the paperclip or shake the bowl, you break the surface tension and the paperclip will sink.

Pond skaters also use water tension to walk on water. They have evolved legs that distribute their weight evenly and so are adapted to life on the water’s surface.

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#TryThisTuesday: Balloon Kebab

balloonkebab

Your challenge this week is to pierce a skewer through a balloon without popping it.

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Share your attempts with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter  – just use the hashtag #TryThisTuesday

How we did it:


Pierce the balloon at the bottom near the knot, then slowly pass the skewer through and piece it through the darkest part at the far end. These points are where the rubber is under the least stress so is less likely to tear and pop under impact.

Did you manage it?

The Great British Beach Clean

This weekend it’s time for the UK’s biggest beach-based litter-picking event – the Great British Beach Clean! Organised by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) the event takes place each year to make beaches cleaner and safer places for wildlife.

43859Not only are thousands of marine species under threat from litter, the waste is also dangerous for humans too and damages tourism and the fishing industry. The beach clean helps lower the threat and raise awareness of the problem at hand.

As well as clearing the sand and rock pools, the event is also vital for marine research. Last year’s data identified wet wipes and balloons as two of the major threats to marine life. Animals may swallow and choke on burst balloon pieces and wildlife can also become entangled in the string. Dolphins, whales, turtles and sea birds have all been killed by balloons so hold on tight next time you have a balloon by the sea side!

If you live locally to a beach and want to get involved the Great British Beach Clean, click here to find an event near you.

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