If one of the five sense is taken away from everyone in the classroom, will all senses become heightened or just one?

There are five senses that we as humans use daily: Sight, Touch, Smell, Taste, and Hear.  It is said that when a person looses a sense,their other four become heightened (or in other words stronger). For instance, my husband lost hearing in his right ear and only has 80% left in his left.  His sense of smell is very strong compared to before he lost his hearing.  Now, if one of the five sense is taken away from everyone in the classroom, will all senses become heightened or just one?  Is it the same sense as everyone else? If we choose a different sense to take away, will that affect which sense gets heightened or does it stay the same? Please provide your hypothesis blog below on what you think will happen on Tuesday when we experiment with our senses.

Experiment Instructions - Hearing: See if can borrow a Pure tone audiometry to test tones; Seeing - Use a chart from an ophthalmologists office; Tasting: (Making sure no one is allergic) Using tubes filled with 3-4 flavors from strong to mild and dip q-tips into liquid and ask them how strong it is. Smell: Using tubes filled with 2-3 strong smells (once again, nothing they are allergic to) waft the smell under the nose and see which ones are strongest and most mild. Touching: Get a few different textures together and have the person put them in order from most rough to softest without looking (the textures will be numbered based on what they should put them in)

Implementing Experiment - Explain that science is a particular way of knowing and obtaining empirical evidence through experimentation and observation.  Scientists create hypothesis on the information they are testing and observing.  Then they use the data they collect to create theories, which is what we will be doing today.. Now Break the students into groups of 4-5.  Have each group make a hypothesis on what will happen on both experiments. Choose one person from each group to be the experiment.  Test the abilities of all their senses and rate them.  Then take away the same sense from each chosen person in the group.  After five minutes of adjusting to the loss of a sense, the group will begin testing the student on similar yet different tests and rating them to see what increases the most.  Then the next day, do the same testing with all their current abilities intact.  Have each group make a hypothesis on what will happen on both experiments. Then assign a different sense to take away from each group.  After five minutes of adjusting to the loss of a sense, the group will begin testing the student on similar yet different tests and rating them to see what increases the most and if the sense was different from the day before.  Then have each group develop a theory based on their information for their group only.  Then combine the data from all groups and have the class develop a theory based on all provided information.  Ask the students: What factors could cause this data to be inconsistent? What was the hardest test to perform? What would you do differently?

Conclusion: Explain that as scientists we have to create tests that would consider all the outside factors that would cause inconsistencies with experiments, in addition what would help us answer our questions/scientific inquiries.  Based on the data from our tests, our theory is going to be the most logical conclusion based on all the "facts" we received.   



Hypothesis Blog

Example: Sam Fund - I believe that when we take away a sense, all the senses will become stronger for all people.  If we test another sense and take that one away instead, I still believe all the senses become stronger.