Blog 15

I'm excited to say that we have finally begun the actual work for our experiment! Mr. Calos had our supplies ready for us on Monday and we got to work right away. He bought us two ice trays, clear-colored Capri Sun, toothpicks, cups, and color dye. The first step was filling a cup with one packet of Capri Sun and adding two drops of color. The first color we made was green. We stirred the dye around with the straw and then, slowly and meticulously, filled half of the ice tray. It was somewhat of a challenge to make sure each space in the tray was filled with the same amount. We made sure to leave about a centimeter at the top so the cubes wouldn't overflow once they froze. We then repeated the process with the blue dye. After filling one entire tray, we covered it with saran wrap and sticked toothpicks through the plastic into each hole. The purpose of the saran wrap is to create the perfectly flat bottoms of the popsicles. This was another slight challenge, as the toothpicks did not tend to go in straight but preferred to be slanted. Our first tray is frozen by now and tomorrow we will continue by making the other colors. So far, our experiment is really interesting and fun. Once again, our hypothesis is that the color of the popsicle will directly influence the person's perception of the taste even though the flavor of each popsicle is identical.

Blog 14

On Friday, Emma, Sosie, and I further developed our ideas as to how we should carry out our experiment. We are sticking with our original idea of testing how visual perception influences taste perception, and we have come up with some more details for our experimental design. Instead of making actual popsicles, we are going to make smaller versions using an ice tray and coloring each individual cube. Each ice cube will have the exact same flavor, but the color will vary. A test subject will taste three different colored cubes and tell us what they think the flavor is. Between each 'popsicle', the person will eat a saltine for palate-cleansing purposes. After the person has sampled three popsicles, we will provide a list of fruits that are associated to the colors of popsicles, from which the person will determine which flavor each one was. We decided that it would be beneficial on our part if we provided flavor options so that we can more easily graph our results after the experiment. Our hypothesis is as follows: The color of the popsicle will directly influence the subject’s perception of the taste even though the flavor of each Popsicle is identical.

Blog 13

It's time to begin our new experiment! The topic of this last experiment of the year is Human Anatomy and Physiology. Sosie, Emma, and I grouped together and, after much brainstorming, we came up with an idea of testing color and taste perception. In order to test this, we are going to make popsicles that are all different colors but have the same flavor. We are hypothesizing that this will cause the people we test to perceive how they think the popsicle will taste solely by looking at the color. We are going to make our own popsicles and use color dye to manipulate the appearance, while giving them all a subtle flavor so that it will be able to be perceived differently among the three differently colored popsicles.
This is about as far as we have gotten, but we are exciting to finish designing and soon begin our experiment!