Please consider sending me any interesting links you come across that directly relate to a chapter. If the link is added to this list, you will get extra-credit!
Electromagnetic Waves. Feynman: FUN TO IMAGINE 8: Seeing Things (Physicist Richard Feynman thinks aloud about swimming pools and the wonders of the electromagnetic spectrum. From the BBC TV series 'Fun to Imagine' (1983).)
Retinal Physiology. Visual neurons mapped in action (Researchers detail structure and workings of mouse and fruit fly retinal circuits.)
Vision Loss. A prosthetic eye to treat blindness (TED) (At TEDMED, Sheila Nirenberg shows a bold way to create sight in people with certain kinds of blindness: by hooking into the optic nerve and sending signals from a camera direct to the brain.)
Object Agnosia. Associative agnosia (See an associative agnosic attempting to recognize objects through touching/smelling versus seeing. For the objects he sees but does not recognize, his hands demonstrate wonderful implicit awareness of how to manually interact with the object, based on representations in the "how" visual pathway.)
Accidental Viewpoints. A short experiment with perspective (Examples in which some images are printed and some are actual 3D models. It is difficult to tell which is which from a certain viewpoint.)
Excellent optical illusionist (A set of optical illusions invented by a Japanese mathematician; many rely on accidental viewpoints and forced perspective.)
Color Mixing. The mystery of magenta (Addresses color perception, color mixing, and the strange case of magenta.)
Qualia. Is your red the same as my red? (An exploration of color vision and the philosophical question of whether everybody perceives colors the same way. This gets into some theory of mind experiments.)
Color Blindness. Colorblind: A colorful guide to colorblindness (This video won first prize at the 2013 Salazar Awards in the category of "Video & Animation," as well as a 2013 Applied Arts Magazine Student Award.)
Color blindness 4: Simulation (Simulation of color blindness. Estimate of what color scenes look like with different levels of color deficiency. Range includes: zero cones, one cone, two cones, and two normal and one hybrid cone. The latter is most common. Dalton describes his color vision.)
Color Constancy. Incredible color constancy illusion! (Video clip of an amazing effect called color constancy. This illusion is caused by the separate red and green illumination of the two cubes and by the apparent shadows that are cast on their front surfaces. We interpret colors as being constantly the same even if there are shadows or different illumination conditions (such as the red and green "lighting" effect). We also define/perceive colors based on their surroundings. The end result is that we see the marked square on the left cube as being light blue (cyan) and the marked square on the right cube as being red. Removing their cue-producing surroundings and placing them next to each other reveals that they are both, in fact, reddish-grey.)
OK Go: The Writing's on the Wall. Alternative rock band OK Go's newest music video for The Writing's on the Wall takes advantage of multiple optical illusions filmed in a single take. Taking nearly three weeks to assemble, the video had to be redone 50 times to get everything right.
Animated Stereogram. An animated stereogram, best viewed with cross-fusion. The motion helps the images to snap into focus.
Motion Parallax. Walt Disney's MultiPlane Camera (Filmed: Feb. 13, 1957). A classic short explaining how Disney studios used a layering effect to create a sense of depth.
Anamorphic Images. Mind Your Step: Unreal Street Art Illusion Created by Erik Johansson. When viewed from a particular angle, people seem to be standing on a cliff over a giant chasm.
Forced Perspective. In Lord of the Rings movies. A short video explaining how they did moving shots with forced perspective in the Lord of the Rings movies.
A Video Game Based on Forced Perspective. Pillow Castle Games, a team of video game developers from Carnegie Mellon University, shows off a demo for their new first-person puzzle solving game. It uses the concept of forced perspective as a mechanism for solving challenges.
Pyro board: 2D Rubens' Tube! This shows unique standing wave patterns of sound in the box. The pressure variations due to the sound waves affect the flow rate of flammable gas from the holes in the Pyro Board and therefore affect the height and colour of flames. This is interesting for visualizing standing wave patterns and simply awesome to watch when put to music.
Amazing resonance experiment! Sound waves vibrate a plate of metal with salt sprinkled on it. At certain frequencies, beautiful, complicated patterns are formed by the grains of salt.
Mega bass 40,000 watts. The effect of 40, 000 watts of mega bass on a woman's hair are immediate. Watch to see the electrifying effect while she prudently covers her ears from the heavy sound.
Auditory Transduction (2002). A video by Brandon Pletsch takes viewers on a step-by-step voyage through the inside of the ear, to the acoustic accompaniment of classical music.
Cochlear Implants. Deaf toddler hears his dad's voice for the first time
Sound localization and binaural recording. A brief review of sound localization and a tutorial on binaural recording to make sounds seem to come from different locations.
Fox snow dive. A red fox listens out for mice scurrying six feet beneath the snow before diving head first into the drift to snap up its prey.
Phantom Limb Video. From Nova's Secrets of the Mind. What phantom limbs illustrate about somatosensory representation, and the plasticity of cortical representations in general.
Olfactory Physiology. Greg Foot delves into why we find some smells pleasant and others disgusting.
Human scent tracking. Description of human scent tracking experiments and a description of how humans' sense of smell likely evolved.
The science of scent. TED talk about the science behind perfume. With charm and precision, biophysicist Luca Turin explains the molecular makeup and art of making a scent.
The difference between taste and flavor. Taste refers to our five sensitivities (sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami) while flavor is a "hedonic" sense involving smell, texture, and expectation.
The science of taste. Scientists decode how our taste and olfactory receptors work; top California chefs are taking that knowledge and creating alchemy in the kitchen.
Food science sensory lab. The Purdue food science sensory evaluation laboratory provides sensory analysis through subjective tasting of food acceptability.
Food professor talks sensory evaluation. Dr. Lisa Duizer (University of Guelph, Canada) visited the Regional Food Academy at Harper Adams to deliver a seminar about the perceptions of tastes and flavors in foods.
Babies eating lemons for the first time. Did not want to end on a sour note... but I guess I did! Watch some babies all have similar reactions when trying lemons for the first time: eyes closing, mouth opening, tongue sticking out, puckering.