Conclusion to Fear Experiment 9-30-10

EDIT: I added a link to my hypothesis blog below.

The project I had done for Monday's class was called the Bugaboo chair.

On my hypothesis blog, I predicted that people would be squeamish.

61.111% of the class had a reaction somewhat related to squeamishness, which according to http://thesaurus.com/browse/squeamish, is similar to unsettlement, upset, sickliness, and disgust.

33.333% of the class responded with positive acclaim and praises of ingenuity.

Finally, 1 person had the response "Slip and Slide"...though I couldn't tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

According to the results, I believe that the experiment was mostly successful. I believe it was because I had prepared visual aids for the audience and performed an impromptu demonstration using a volunteer. However, if I were to make it better, I could have done the following if I was given much more time:

+Prepared my speech far in advance
+Actually brought more props for physical demonstration purposes.
+Created higher-quality(i.e. color) mockups of the project in question.

I had plenty of other fears to choose from, such as pain, heights, or criticism, but the fear of insects was the only one I could think of that could manifest itself in a physical form.

Not that many people were able to present this week, but out of all the projects that were presented and those that probably scared me the most, it was probably Kyle's psychological experiment in which he told us all to plug our ears and keep our eyes closed. It affected me strongly, because I was scared that Kyle or someone else was gonna touch me randomly. That would have startled me and made me scream. Kyle's was almost the same as my project, except my project didn't involve cutting off hearing with sound blockage of any kind, because sound was an integral part of my project, especially with the buzzing rod speakers. It was the element of surprise and fear of the unknown that could psychologically affect anyone.

Response to today's class 9-27-10

Today we presented our fear-based projects in class, as part of our scientific method midterm blog.
There were so many projects that I couldn't really list them all. So I'll just give out my top five.

5. Kara Yerke-her project was ABC(already been chewed) gum/gum found unwrapped on the ground. I wouldn't eat that gum, because I found it disgusting.
4. Thomas Fraley-he brought a live mouse to class. Her name was Jezebel. She was kinda cute, but it made me fear for my life because she was so small.
3. Julia Lipps-she popped some balloons. The time at which she popped each one was random and unexpected, so it startled me.
2. Kathryn Thacker-we had a lot of fun with this one. She hid someone in a cardboard box, and saw how long he would last until he freaked out. He stayed in there for...ten minutes, I believe.
1. William Wallace-he lit his hand on fire using antibacterial hand sanitizer and a lighter. A LIGHTER. I'm surprised that it didn't get him in trouble with administrators. It did look cool, though.

There were some people who held their projects off until next week, so they told stories instead. Sean told the raunchiest one, while Travis told a painful one.

Squeamish 9-25-10

With my invention built around the fear I've chosen, I predict that some of the class would be squeamish if they imagined using my invention, because I feel that my fear is somewhat widespread, more so than my other ones.

I can't give too much information away, but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.

Response to class 9-20-10

Today was kinda special.

One of the students(Jack, I believe?) brought in a ferret named Gizmo. He was kinda cute actually.

Anyway, the main bulk of the class was about discussing our sense blogs and talking about fears in general. The question that Beth asked us was whether there was a difference between fear and discomfort. To me, there isn't; they're mainly one and the same. You can be fearful AND uncomfortable.

Take me for instance: I have fears of rollercoasters, heights, criticism and many more. Those make me feel uncomfortable and I fear them.

The Freudian sense 9-17-10

For this blog, my mission is to invent a new sense to go along with the five senses we already have. Since the possibility of the existence of ESP/Sixth Sense is already out there, I wanted to try something different. What if we could sense how much id, ego, and superego exists within a person's mind?

For those not familiar with Freud:
Id is associated with sexual, aggressive, and self-satisfying urges.
Ego is associated with organization and realism(thanks to Wikipedia for reminding me, because I had forgotten what the ego was; I only remembered it as the "self").
Superego is mainly associated with morals.

I invented a special apparatus that actually measures how much of each part of the psyche exists. That apparatus is named the Freudian Goggles. When one wears these goggles, one is able to switch modes of vision from normal to a type of thermal vision that, instead of tracking people's body heat, it would track their brains to trace the amounts of id, ego, and superego.

The id is represented by the color red.
The ego is represented by the color green.
The superego is represented by the color blue.

This type of apparatus might be used by law enforcement to track down persons with high levels of id and low levels of ego and superego to prevent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, etc., just like the Pre-Crime enforcement in Minority Report. Those people might be singled out and transported to a facility where they are psychologically evaluated and then treated through a type of Ludovico technique(A Clockwork Orange) to regulate and normalize the id, ego, and superego, or to extensively lower the levels of id and heighten the levels of ego and superego.

Though, there is the risk that this might lead to intrusive dictatorship-like control and loss of privacy, such as that within the world established in George Orwell's 1984, but only time would tell if that happens, if this sense actually does exist.

Thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego,_and_super-ego for help on the Ego definition

Response to today's class 9-13-10

So what can I say about today?

Well, today, we discussed our walking backwards, egg ideas, and AVL application blogs. When I discussed my egg idea, Beth saw what I didn't see: that I made a metaphor out of freezing my egg. The metaphor was freezing something in time, at that moment. She also discussed the phrase "I meant to do that." I was pretty surprised.

Also, we discussed limitations and that it's OK to have limitations, but not to let them limit our ideas. I have my own limitations. In fact, here's a partial list:

• Impatience
• Indecisiveness
• General Laziness
• Worrywartedness
• Jumping To Conclusions
• Impulsiveness
• Introvertedness

We also discussed the concepts of "why?" and "because..." in class. We also made up our own "why"s and "because"s on the writing boards.

We also discussed senses and were encouraged to come up with our own "sense" and create a device that appeals to that sense. Either that, or to combine answers to "Why?" and explanations under "because...".

That's all I have for now. Ta-ta!

Walking Backwards...not really useful 9-9-10

So, on a few separate occasions over the past two weeks, I've tried to walk backwards as much as I can voluntarily. The problem was that it was hard to get and just do so voluntarily. Whenever I did elect to walk backwards, no new ideas suddenly popped into my brain. Also, I would have to look backwards over my shoulder if I did, because I didn't want to bump into any walls or people, nor did I want to fall down the stairs.

I kinda wish we were like cars, so we would have rear-view mirrors to make walking in reverse easier, not to mention safer than just walking backwards as we are now. Or at least we should have shoulder mirrors or pants that detect objects or stairs behind us, like in some new vans. But then if we were like cars, then EVERY time something bumps against us, even gently, airbags would pop out of us, and that would be embarrassing.

I guess I'm probably just too left-brained or mathematical to understand this activity fully, I don't know.

Virtual Reality Mall 9-8-10

On Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, I went to the Castleton Square Mall. There are a lot of stores and restaurants inside and outside the mall. Newcomers to this mall could end up lost in the mall. Castleton Square may have maps inside, but sometimes maps may not be as intuitive as they should. So I thought, "Why not use the Virtual Reality Cave technology as a tour of the mall for newcomers? That way they could plan a trip to their store(s) of choice." There would be this special room in which new mall-goers enter and then use the wireless controller to move about the virtual mall modeled after the actual mall. The room would be periodically updated to include new stores.

Speaking of new stores, there can sometimes be a space in the mall with a sign that says "Coming Soon" with the name of the upcoming store. What might work even better would be a "coming attractions" style sneak-preview of the upcoming store or restaurant. That would be where the V.R. Cave from the previous technology example comes in. Mall-goers would be able to "tour" the new store/restaurant to see what it looks like in the same way new mall-goers would tour the mall. Chauncey's capstone project, the Smellevision project, would be incorporated into tours of perfume stores or restaurants to smell the perfume and food respectively.