IB World

Earlier I mentioned a TOK project that I was working on to test the accuracy of the perception of touch. For the sake of scientific integrity I couldn't reveal what experiment we finally settled on performing. It was very SENSITIVE information (Sorry, I couldn't resist). So we decided to test how expectations effected the perception of touch. All participants were asked to pick up two containers filled of equal weight. Then we asked them differently worded questions depending on the group. The questions introduced or excluded the concept of them being equal in weight, and was basically to see how expectations effected perception (Super sneaky, right?). Even our principal stopped by to try it. Afterwards, everyone said ours was the most frustrating. That's not a problem, because that was the point.

My Partner in Crime with the Containers

But ours wasn't nearly the most dangerous. I cannot possibly fathom what led the taste group to do this, but they had an apple sauce container with frozen rice in it and they got at least 13 people to lick it, without mentioning that this was so to the subjects. They even got our much revered history teacher to do it, and he was disturbed by our cries of "Gross!" afterwards.  Surely the CDC would have a problem with that. At least we'll know where to put the blame when Ebola ravages the school.

We all had experiments, and naturally we needed guinea pigs to experiment upon, i.e. classmates. So I made the rounds of experiments testing other senses. It felt a bit like an IB amusement park after awhile, because I waited in long lines for intellectual roller coasters. The only thing missing was funnel cake.

This was one that tested smell. I was in the control group, so they just asked me to close my eyes and name what I could smell. The only thing I could come up with was a mixture of lemonade, glue, and thumbprint cookies. Turns out it was cream soda. But this is my friend in an experimental group. The group had the name of something on the computer as subjects walked in, and asked them to smell things similar to the thing on the screen. For instance, the computer could have had a lime on it, but it would be lemon they were smelling.

This one was sight. A picture of a fruit appeared on the computer screen indecently briefly and I had to name it when I saw it. Of course I was a failure at this, because it didn't occur to me that the colors of the fruits could be changed and it was still the fruit. Oh, and I forgot apples can be yellow. Yeah...

Overall, this IB amusement park was great. We got to spend class time relaxing and doing fun experiments. Of course it won't be nearly as enjoyable when we have to write lab reports. Too bad we don't get to go to IB World more often, or more accurately the fun part of IB World. The rest of it is cramming for tests, hours of homework, and 7:00 Latin. But it's totally worth it.

My Comrades in Arms