Abby's+Plan

1. Choosing A Project:

TOPICS THAT INTEREST ME: How do different things affect how senses work? 1) Music and sleeping 2) Taste

This experiment requires the sense of smell. It is said to be that without your nose, you may not be able to taste what you are eating. In this experiment I will test to see if this is actually true by having someone taste a food, once with their nose plugged and once without their nose plugged while blindfolded. []

CURRICULUM CONNECTION: Senses 35 - Explain the role of sensory organs in perceiving stimuli (in my project it will be flavors) and sending signals to the brain. 36 - Conduct simple tests to explore the capabilities of the human senses

MY TESTABLE QUESTION: Does smelling food affect the taste of it?

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: Breath it in

DEPENDENT VARIABLE: Taste

2. Investigate the Information:

 NOTES/FACTS: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-how-does-sight-smell-affect-taste > Smells also seem to come from the mouth, even though there are no cells there responsible for detecting scents. Instead the sensation of strawberry, for example, depends upon activation of smell cells located at the end of the nasal passage. The information gathered by these cells is relayed to the mouth via a process called olfactory referral. > To demonstrate this phenomenon for yourself, hold your nose and place a strawberry jelly bean in your mouth and chew. You should detect sweetness and a little sourness, along with the hard (and then soft) feeling of the candy. With your nose held, however, you won't notice the strawberry odor. When you let go, though, you allow the odor molecules to travel through the nasal cavity to the smell cells, and suddenly the jelly bean has a strawberry flavor. (This will be what I do during my experiment.)
 * Although sight and smell aren't technically part of taste, they do have a huge influence.
 * Smell is a big part of flavor
 * olfactory referral <-
 * Acquiring information related to scent through the back of the mouth is called retronasal olfaction—via the nostrils it is called orthonasal olfaction. Both methods influence flavor; aromas such as vanilla, for example, can cause something perceived as sweet to taste sweeter. Once an odor is experienced along with a flavor, the two become associated; thus, smell influences taste and taste influences smell.

http://www.scienceprojectideas.co.uk/effect-smell-taste.html
 * A lot of the sense of taste actually comes from the sense of smell, as shown by the fact that a lot of people with no sense of smell say that their food tastes bland. People can detect over 10,000 different smells, and smell the food before they eat it, and then as they chew, more of the smell of the food moves from the mouth to the nose.
 * There are about 10 million olfactory receptors, and these send messages to the olfactory bulb, at the front of the brain.

NOW THAT I'VE DONE SOME RESEARCH, I PREDICT THE ANSWER TO MY QUESTION WILL BE: I predict that the answer to my question will be that yes smelling food does affect the taste. I predict this because the senses of smell and taste are very well related. I do not think it will affect the taste as much as some people believe.

3. Plan A Procedure:

First I will find three different people to test my experiment on. Then I will blindfold one at a time and have them test the different flavors of food. I will record my data for all three people. After I record the data I will compare whether or not my prediction was accurate. I will be able to do this by viewing if the subject could identify the flavor of the food they ate. After this I will conclude my experiment.

4. What I'll Need: A blind fold, different flavors of the same food (such as jelly beans or different fruit of veggie slices), a cup of water for people

I have these: Blind fold, water cups! I need to locate these: Different types of foods to test

5. Keeping Track - Proposed Data Sheet

6. Analyze It All

 Here's a Graph:

The data shows that. . ..



Therefore, I conclude that being able to smell food does help the body recognize the taste. There was only one time throughout this entire experiment that the percentage of correct answers when the nose was unplugged was lower than when the nose was plugged. I conclude that the nose and mouth are definitely connected and go hand-in-hand. I also concluded that males and females wouldn't change the results of this experiment, since I tested two males and two females. The age influence changes either. All of my victims were different ages. This helped me realize that humans bodies all taste and smell the same way. This is my conclusion.

But was my work valid? My work was valid. The only way that it wouldn't be valid is if a person looked at the color/flavor of the food, or if their nose was not plugged. Based on the results, I don't believe that this happened once. I also tested both males and females for my results at different ages to see if that had an influence on anything, and based on the results it didn't. Another way my work could be invalid was if somebody had a cold. This could cause them to not be able to smell or taste before plugging their nose, but that hadn't occurred during my experiment. My work was valid.

=7. Bibliography=

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