Gathering+Data+through+All+Senses

While our sight is one of our most important senses in gathering data, in this experiment, it proved less useful. We were told beforehand that when we ignited magnesium,, it would burn brightly, too brightly to look at directly since it blinds us. This made the sense of sight, while stil useful, rather less effective in gathering data for this experiment, and we had to rely on other senses.

Before we burned the magnesium, I made sure to look at it closely. Since it wasn't toxic, I was able to handle it with my hands without much harm. It was dull silvery in color, and somewhat flat in tone, but when we burned it, it lit up extremely brightly even in the well-lit classroom. Since we couldn't look at it directly, we used our other senses. There was no sound, no exploding or fizzing noise as it ignited. There was no smell either, which made magnesium different from substances such as gunpowder or sodium, which bursts into flame in a chemical reaction. The light produced was brighter, not a result of a fire, but rather energy being expelled in the form of light.

Touch and taste couldn't really be used. While I was able to handle the magnesium before we ignited it, during and after the burning, it was too hot for us to touch it, and we certaintly couldn't taste it.

However, in this experiment, I learned that sometimes we need to rely on more than just one sense to really get the whole picture of what is going on.