School › Senses
The five senses
How we see, hear, smell, taste and feel, special and general senses, the kinds of receptors, why food tastes bland with a blocked nose, why fingertips feel finer detail than the arm, and how receptors turn stimuli into nerve signals. Three ages, each with a text, an experiment, a game, a quiz, a printable worksheet and a teacher sheet.
Ages 6–7My five sensesSeeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching: what each sense tells us and how our senses work together. With a mystery feely bag.Ages 10–11Senses and receptors: how we sense the worldSpecial and general senses, the kinds of receptors, taste buds and the five basic tastes, why smell matters for flavour, and why fingertips feel finer detail. With a fair test: does smell help taste?Ages 15–16Sensory receptors: transduction, receptive fields and thresholdsClassifying receptors, transduction and adaptation, the touch receptors and their frequencies, two-point thresholds and receptive fields, taste transduction, smell pathways and cochlear frequency mapping. With a two-point threshold investigation.