Sinne
10 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- At night you only see faint stars if you look away.
Your retina carries about 120 million rods for dim light and some 6 million cones for colour and detail. In the fovea …
- Chilli heat isn't a taste – it's a false alarm.
The TRPV1 receptor on pain nerves opens above about 43 degrees Celsius – and equally to capsaicin from chilli or to …
- Each eye is missing a patch of image, and you never notice.
Where the optic nerve leaves the retina there are no light-sensing cells. This blind spot sits about 15 degrees to the …
- How your cochlea sorts tones by place, not by time.
The basilar membrane in the cochlea is stiff and narrow at the base, soft and wide at the apex. High frequencies …
- How your ear knows which way is up.
Your inner ear holds a two-part measuring device. Three ring-shaped semicircular canals sit at right angles like the …
- The sense that lets you touch your nose in the dark.
Muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs and joint receptors constantly report length, tension and angle. Charles …
- The tongue map from school is a misreading.
Sweet at the tip, bitter at the back, sour at the sides: this map goes back to a 1901 paper that found only tiny …
- This shrimp punches faster than you can blink.
Mantis shrimp fling their clubs forward at over 80 km/h, cracking snail shells and, rarely, even aquarium glass. The …
- You taste strawberry mostly with your nose.
Your tongue detects only five basic qualities: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Everything finer, whether …
- You're blind for hours every day without noticing.
Your eyes jump about 3 times a second in rapid movements called saccades. During each jump, lasting 20 to 200 …