Gathering+Data+Through+all+Senses

Gathering Data Through all Senses //﻿﻿ Use all your senses, stay alive, participate fully,// //get your hands dirty, experience it all. Don't hold back.//

Smell, touch, vision, taste; these are all examples of senses. In order to fully experience something, one needs to use all one's senses. During my rock candy experiment with Emily and Rob, I felt the need to use all my senses in order to experience and understand it all. The smell of granulated sugar, syrup, brown sugar, and powdered sugar all engaged in my nostrils as I understood that syrup is super sticky. Granulated sugar and brown sugar have the similar feel of tiny rocks. And powdered sugar feels like, well, powder. Yet when all combined with water they all turn sticky. Looking at them I understood that brown sugar is brown, syrup is in liquid form and brown and opaque, while powdered sugar and granulated sugar is white, but powdered sugar looks brighter white while granulated sugar just looks like tiny translucent crystals together. This was before we started boiling them in water. Pouring out the sugars I experienced how brown sugar sticks together in big chunks, syrup is very smooth, powdered sugar pours like chunks, but the chunks don't stick together, and granulated sugar pours out smoothly.

When boiled in water, powdered sugar and granulated sugar keeps the solution transparent, while brown sugar turns the solution dark and opaque, and syrup gives you a translucent dark mixture where the syrup is clearly not being dissolved into the water. The smell of the syrup greatly increases when being boiled, while powdered sugar and granulated sugar don't give off that strong of a smell. Brown sugar smells strongest when it lands on the hot plate and burns. It gives off a brown sugary smell combined with a burnt smell. The solution after being boiled all seems thick and feels very sticky. The thickness can be compared to a glue-like thickness. When stirring inside with a plastic spoon the spoon would melt and twist because the solution has a stronger push against it because of the thickness. The understanding of the materials used and how it reacts can only be realized through using all senses to experience it.



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