The task of the sensory system is to provide sensations from the external and internal environment, coordinate voluntary and involuntary responses and regulate and control the structures and peripheral organs through the other systems to which it is connected.
The tools available to us to explore and get to know the environment in which we find ourselves in real time are our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.
"VISION
IN THE TUNNEL"
The exhibit consists of a tunnel with rotating walls. Walking through the tunnel will play tricks on visitors' sense of balance, thanks to light effects and images on the walls.
Upon exiting the tunnel, visitors will have the perception of being drunk: blurred vision, inability to adapt to reduced light, decreased concentration, unstable gait etc. .. This is because our senses can be disturbed in their functioning by stimuli coming from external ... including alcohol or drugs that we voluntarily take.
"ALCOHOL
EFFECTS ON SIGHT"
To test how alcohol disturbs our vision, the visitor is invited to throw a basketball in the basket. More or less easy gesture, even for those who are not an NBA player. You only need a good aim and maybe try a couple of times to take the right distances. But, repeating the operation with a pair of prismatic glasses, the vision becomes blurred and scoring becomes difficult. When we get drunk, the next morning we don't remember how blurry our vision was, with this experience the visitor can try it: prismatic glasses simulate our vision as "drunk".
"WALK
IN THE WOODS"
Thanks to a helmet-visor and HTC Vive controls and a Kinect system for detecting movements, the user will immerse himself in a walk in the virtual forest. By following the path you can visit the entire grove and all its points of interest, immersed in sounds, colors, shapes and climate, until you return to the starting point. Once all the points of interest are exhausted, the grove slowly vanishes, leaving room only for graphics that invite the user to remove the helmet to make way for the next visitor. The walks will change according to the season and the time of day making the experience as immersive as possible. On the walls will also be placed vaporization nozzles from which water spray will be sprayed on the user.
"AKA
HAIR-RAISING"
In this exhibit, visitors can experience the effects of stress on our bodies. A platform charged with static electricity will cause a certain electrical charge to flow into the visitor's body until it reaches the hair, which will rise. It will thus act as a "hair halyard". A bit like when we take off a wool sweater. Electrostaticity is nothing more than the superficial and localized accumulation of small electrical charges on an insulating body.
The materials can be conductive or insulating, depending on whether they are crossed by electric charges. In materials such as metals, water and the human body itself, the charges produced move freely therefore they are conductive. While plastic, rubber, glass, wood, porcelain are insulators, because electric charges cannot pass through them.
"THE
BED OF NAILS"
The visitor is invited to lie down on a smooth surface, like a bed ... but at the push of a button, hundreds of nails rise from the base! Do not worry: although this may be worrying, no pain will be felt.
The nails will all rise evenly and in unison, making sure that our weight is well distributed over their entire surface. The distribution of weight, in this case, is fundamental for feeling pain: if I step on a nail all my weight is contracted on a single small spike of a few millimeters in diameter, but if the nails are many and cover a large surface and weight of the visitor is distributed over the entire surface no pain will be felt!
"THERMAL
ILLUSION"
The installation consists of three metal coils woven around a central body. On the one hand, the coils will have a lower temperature than the ambient temperature (minimum 10 ° C), on the other the temperature will be higher than that of the human body (maximum 40 ° C). In the central part the temperature will be equivalent to that of the environment. When a visitor touches the ends of the coil he will experience sensations of heat and cold. but when he tries to touch the central part he will have the sensation of burning himself. This is because our skin has different types of nerve cells, some are responsible for cold sensations and others for heat; but when they are activated simultaneously, the brain cannot manage information separately.
By Fondazione Idis-Città della Scienza
Corporea: Interactive museum of human body
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