Top Ten Incredible Sound Illusions

List Universe (Listverse) at http://listverse.com/ produces a multitude of interesting lists. They try to "focus on lists that intrigue and educate, specializing in the bizarre or less-known trivia". While Listverse does accept a few submissions from the general public, they are responsible for researching and creating most of the listings. One such list is the "Top Ten Incredible Sound Illusions" at http://listverse.com/2008/02/29/top-10-incredible-sound-illusions/.

Please be aware the website includes advertisement and space for comments from visitors. Some of these comments include inappropriate language for a school setting. Depending on the policies of your school/school district, it might be unwise for a teacher to refer students to this site. In addition, the site recommends listening to many of the sound illusions using a set of headphones or stereo speakers.

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A Tiny Fruit that Tricks the Tongue - NY Times

The May 28, 2008 edition of the New York Times ran an article describing one of the latest "party fad" in the New York area. People attending these parties are given a West African fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, that distorts your sense of taste and then allowed to taste a variety of foods. This could be a fantastic introduction or conclusion to a discussion on the sense of taste. The article, with video clip, can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/dining/28flavor.html

Bill James of Milford High School in Highland, MI has developed an activity using "Miracle Frooties", a tablet version of the fruit, in which students eat a Miracle Frooties tablet and consume various sour items. A complete explanation of this activity can be downloaded from the 4Shared file sharing account http://www.4shared.com/dir/10555367/29577282/sharing.html A special thanks goes out to Bill for sharing this activity with the THSP blog.

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Flocking behavior and Social Networks

For your students interested in/fascinated by/ obsessed with social networking: This USA Today article describes research into whether on-line social networking is associated with the same health/emotional/well-being benefits previous studies found for other forms of social connectedness. Might be a good place for a high school student to start a research project?

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Jeff Milner's Backmasking Website

When discussing subliminal perception, many also bring up backmasking, recording a message within a song backwards. Jeff Milner has developed a collection of 14 popular songs which reportedly have hidden backward messages. The song clips can be played from the site forward, backward and include the lyrics. Jeff's backmasking site can be found at http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm

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CHI-TOPSS Annual Conference

The Chicagoland Teachers of Psychology (CHI-TOPSS) have set Friday, October 23, 2009 as the date for their annual conference. This year's gathering will be at Lake Park High School - West Campus in Roselle, IL.

Running from 8:00 am to 1:30 pm, the day promises to be one of sharing new ideas and insights into the teaching of psychology, networking with colleagues, and much more. All this, with a continental breakfast and lunch included, for just $25.

To apply for or find out more about this CHI-TOPSS conference, contact Terri Lindenberg at TLindenberg@lphs.org or Stacey Mosquera at SMosquera@lphs.org. The registration deadline is October 16.

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Jung's The Red Book coming soon

Thinking of updating your wish list? You might want to consider adding this one: in October WW Norton will publish Carl Gustavus Jung's The Red Book for the first time. Featured in a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine earlier this month and referred to by the publisher as "the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology," the book is from a journal written and illustrated by Jung over a 15 year period. It was been hidden from the public view by Jung's heirs until they very recently made the decision to publish it.

What's the book about? Here's a quote from the NYT article to get you started:

The Red Book is not an easy journey — it wasn’t for Jung, it wasn’t for his family, nor for Shamdasani, and neither will it be for readers. The book is bombastic, baroque and like so much else about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synched with an antediluvian and mystical reality. The text is dense, often poetic, always strange. The art is arresting and also strange. Even today, its publication feels risky, like an exposure. But then again, it is possible Jung intended it as such. In 1959, after having left the book more or less untouched for 30 or so years, he penned a brief epilogue, acknowledging the central dilemma in considering the book’s fate. “To the superficial observer,” he wrote, “it will appear like madness.” Yet the very fact he wrote an epilogue seems to indicate that he trusted his words would someday find the right audience.

At the bargain price of $105 (at Barnes and Noble -- Amazon appears sold out and now has a delivery date of December for new orders) I'm guessing this one will be a perfect present for others to give you!

Finally, as a geek I personally love the fact that "a 10,200-pixel scanner suspended on a dolly clicked and whirred, capturing the book one-tenth of a millimeter at a time and uploading the images into a computer." Below are some of the images for you to enjoy.

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Class Size Survey

On September 8, 2009, the New York Times ran a front page lead article detailing how, due to massive budget cuts and teacher layoffs, class sizes have skyrocketed throughout the country. The article describes how while education stimulus funds have slightly softened the blow, class counts are still extremely high this academic year.

I though it might be interesting to survey the average class size for high school level Psychology and AP Psychology courses across the country.

Please complete one or both of the surveys below depending on which is appropriate to your course load. The current results will appear once you cast your vote. Thanks to all those who have participated.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research

N=064 as of 01/27/12.

N=062 as of 01/27/12.

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Queen's Speech

Many teachers use the "Vases or Faces" illusion when discussing figure/ground illusions, including the special vase designed for Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee as seen on the right.

GrandIllusions.com has developed a short (1:11 minutes) video clip at http://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/queens_speech/ explaining and demonstrating the vase.

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Great new site: Clips for Class

*** UPDATE (9/25): after seeing several concerns on the AP Psych e-mail list I e-mailed Dr. Freberg and as it turns out, Clips for Class is a work in progress. Right now it looks like only the behavioral clips are available, but Dr. Freberg noted in an e-mail that more clips will be added over time. She also said that she will encourage her publisher to work more quickly to add content!

Via a post by teacher Jacqui Wilson on the AP Psych e-mail list today: psychology professor Dr. Laura Freberg has teamed up with her publisher Cengage to offer an awesome new resource for psychology teachers called Clips for Class. As you can see (left) the clips are nicely sorted by unit so you can find them quickly. Dr. Freberg also asks for additional videos to add to this resource so if you have some favorites forward them on to her.

Her blog is also definitely worth following!

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Exploritorium - Perception Snacks

The Exploritorium has developed "hands on" activities they call "Snacks". Below is a listing of the Perception Snacks. Click on the individual Snack or go to http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/iconperception.html for the listing.

Each snacks provides a detailed description of how to assemble any equipment needed and how to demonstrate the perception concept.

Students could be assigned any number of the snacks to complete on their own and present them to the class or they could do the Snack as an extra credit project. Teachers could use the Snacks to create their own class demonstrations.

Snack Name - Description

• Afterimage - A flash of light prints a lingering image in your eye.
• Anti-Gravity Mirror -It's all done with mirrors!
• Benham's Disk - A rotating black-and-white disk produces the illusion of color.
• Bird in the Cage - Stare at a color and see it change.
• Blind Spot - To see or not to see.
• Bronx Cheer Bulb - Some lightbulbs appear to wiggle and flash when you give them the raspberry, but the only thing wiggling is you.
• Cardboard Tube Syllabus - Your brain combines information from your eyes in surprising ways.
• Cheshire Cat - Make a friend disappear, leaving only a smile behind.
• Colored Shadows - Shadows are not all black and white.
• Depth Spinner -What happens when you get off the merry-go-round?
• Disappearing Act -If you want to stay hidden, you'd better stay still.
• Everyone is You and Me -See yourself become someone else.
• Fading Dot - Now you see it; now you don't. An object without a sharp edge can fade from your view.
• Far 0ut Corners -Your experience of the world influences what you see.
• Gray Step - Without a boundary, it's hard to distinguish different shades of gray.
• Jacques Cousteau in Seashells - There's more to seeing than meets the eye
• Magic Wand - See pictures in thin air.
• Moire Patterns - When you overlap materials with repetitive lines, you create moire patterns.
• Peripheral Vision - We are not usually aware of our eyes' limitations.
• Persistence of Vision - Your eye and brain hold on to a series of images to form a single complete picture.
• Pinhole Magnifier - Who needs expensive optical equipment?
• Proprioception - Even with our eyes closed, we have a sense of body position - where our arms and legs are, for example, and that we are moving them. Muscles, tendons, joints and the inner ear contain proprioceptors, also known as stretch receptors, which relay positional information to our brains.
• Pupil - Your pupil changes size to control how much light enters your eye.
• Real Image - Create the image of an object in space using a $2 ornament.
• Seeing Your Blind Spot - See your blind spot.
• Seeing Your Retina - You can use a dim point of light to cast a shadow of the blood supply of your retina onto the retina itself. This will allow you to see the blood supply of your retina, and even your blind spot.
• Sense of Taste - Receptors on our tongues bind to chemicals in our food and relay the information about the chemicals to our brain. Surprisingly, all those wonderful tastes are transmitted to our brains through only four types of receptors on our tongues - those for sweet, sour, salt and bitter.
• Size and Distance - A clueless way to determine the size of an object.
• Spinning Cyclinder - A spinning rod with a mark near one end is set rotating and spinning at the same time. Amidst the blur of the spinning cylinder, the mark appears three times, forming a stationary triangle.
• Squirming Palm - This visual illusion makes the palm of your hand appear to squirm and twist.
• Thread the Needle - Using two eyes gives you depth perception.
• Vanna - A face seen upside down may hold some surprises.
• Whirling Watcher - When you view short bursts of moving images, you see some interesting effects.

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