Skin Sensitivity Lab
Hypothesis: The fingertips will be the most sensitive because they are used the most for touching things all of the time. The area that will be the least sensitive is the shins because we are constantly bumping into things with our shins so they need to be less sensitive to pain.
Data:
TEST |Index Finger Tip |
Thumb |
Palm |
Back of Hand |
Forearm
(inside) |
Fore-
head |
Nose |
Back of Neck |
Shin | |1 probe |+ |+ |+ |+ |- |- |+ |- |- | |1 mm |+ |- |+ |+ |+ |- |+ |+ |- | |3 mm |+ |+ |+ |+ |- |+ |+ |+ |+ | |5 mm |+ |+ |+ |- |+ |+ |+ |+ |+ | |10 mm |+ |+ |+ |+ |- |- |+ |- |+ | |TOTALS |5 |4 |5 |4 |2 |2 |5 |3 |3 | |CLASS
AVG |4.3 |4.0 |3.3 |2.8 |3.0 |2.9 |3.0 |3.0 |2.9 | |
Conclusion:
The most sensitive areas of my body were my fingertips, palm, and nose. The least sensitive areas of my body were my forearm and forehead. This partly supported my hypothesis because the fingertips were among the most sensitive but my shins were not the least sensitive.
My results were fairly close to the rest of the class. The only two areas that were more than a point apart between my data and the class average were my palms and my nose. These areas were more sensitive to me than the rest of the class.
Some areas might be more sensitive because they are involved with touching and bumping into things than others. For example my fingertips were far more sensitive than my forearms because I use them to touch things all the time and the touch receptors are more dense in them. It makes sense that touch receptors are more dense in areas that are involved in more touching than others. In places where a lot of bumping into things occurs such as the shins, touch receptors would be less dense because you wouldn't want to feel all that pain all the time.
Meissner’s corpuscles are light touch receptors in the skin which are prone to touch sensitivity. They are located just under the epidermis, which makes sense because they are closer to