Vicki Cobb - We Dare You!: Hundreds of Science Bets, Challenges, and Experiments You Can Do at Home

W ho is the Human Wonder? Its not Superman, Wonder Woman, or even the Incredible Hulk. Its someone with the power of science. Surprise! Its you.

You can perform superhero acts you didnt know were possible. Were going to reveal some of your unbelievable powers in this chapter. The Incredible Hulk may well envy your ability to hold down someone with a single thread, and you can outsuper Superman with secret messages sent by your blood.

Youre better connected in some ways than you thought you were. Would you believe your upper lip has a direct link to your temperature sensors? So does your heart. Brainless connections also exist between your nose and your ears. Some messages arent sent through the brain. Muscles can act as if they have minds of their own, making moves that are out of your control. And in a real brain bypass, the spinal cord can be tricked to give you a fake fright.

On the other hand, dont believe what you see or trust what you hear, smell, or feel as you do some of the tricks in this chapter. Your senses can fool you. So can your body. The way you perceive the world is not always the way it really is. This allows us to include a crazy bunch of specialized con gamesa trip into the world of inner spacefor your own mind and body. Youll think you have taken leave of your senses as we trick your eyes with an optical illusion, prove that the hand is not always quicker than the eye, fix it so one hand doesnt know what the other is doing, and set it up so that your body will disobey your mind. You can be tricked into seeing spots that arent really there, and in our version of a truly tasteless joke, an apple seems to be a potato.

The most surprising thing of all is that these talents have been there all along. But most people cant use these quirks of taste, touch, and sight without the kind of help were going to give you. The capacity of the human mind and body has long fascinated scientists. Their testing, stressing, and pushing of the limits of the human being have led to many useful discoveries. This chapter probably will not introduce things that will make medical history. The Human Wonders were selected for the highest possible fun and stun factors... but this is just the beginning...

Welcome to scienceup close and personal.

KEEPING THE LIDS ON

Bet you can roll your eyeballs so that you cant open your eyes!

THE SETUP

Roll your eyeballs so that you are looking up as high as you can. Do not tilt your head backward. Now close your eyes. Keep your eyeballs in the raised position and try to open your eyes.

INSIDER INFORMATION

This is impossible. The muscles that are required to raise the eyelids are already hard at work in the opposite direction keeping the eyeballs looking upward. In fact, there are many people who cant even shut their eyes with their eyeballs rolled back. So if you are one of these, shut your eyelids and roll back your eyeballs under your closed eyelids. Now try to open your eyelids.

HOT STUFF

Bet you can taste hot peppers with your wrist!

THE SETUP

Place a few drops of Tabasco sauce on the inside of your wrist. Wait a few minutes.

INSIDER INFORMATION

In a few minutes you will definitely feel a burning sensation on your wrist. The burning sensation is not as great as the burning sensation you would feel on your tongue, which has the most receptors for the hot chemicals. These are not taste receptors but pain receptors.

In Tabasco sauce and other hot spices there is a chemical that triggers nerves that respond to hotness. Be sure to wash the Tabasco sauce off your wrist with soap and water when you have finished the experiment. Hot peppers can cause irritation over a prolonged period.

OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY

Bet you cant tell hot from cold!

THE SETUP

You will need three bowls of water: One cold, one very warm, and one room temperature. Soak your left hand in the cold water and your right hand in the hot water for about three minutes. Then, plunge both hands into the bowl of room temperature water. Is the water hot or cold?

INSIDER INFORMATION

You will not be able to answer because the water feels both hot and cold. The brain is getting conflicting signals from your hands. One says the water is cold; the other says its hot. You will be thoroughly confused.

Hot and cold are relative terms and depend on what you use as a reference. Here you use two different references. The hand that has been in the cold water now feels hot. The hand thats been in the hot water now feels cold.

MISSING THE POINT

Bet you cant make two pencil points meet on one try!

THE SETUP

Take a sharp pencil in each hand. Hold your hands about two feet apart and with the pencil points facing each other. Close one eye. Keep it closed! Now try to get the points to meet.

INSIDER INFORMATION

This trick proves that you cant always believe your eyes. You cant bring the points together because you eliminate binocular vision (vision from two separate vantage points) when you close one eye. Binocular vision helps your brain calculate the distance of an object. When one eye is covered, the familiar depth cues are missing. Depth perception is most difficult on objects as close together as the pencils. And the margin for error with targets as small as the pencil points is enormous.

Practice will make you perfect in this stunt. The body learns other ways to judge depth when given practice. See if you can get the pencil points to meet after a few more tries. Bet you can!

ONLY BY A THREAD ...

Bet you can hold a friend on the ground with a thread!

THE SETUP

Get a friend to lie face up on the ground. Hold the ends of a piece of thread about two feet long in your hands. Place the middle of the thread under your friends nose. Now let your friend attempt to stand up.