Connections: Sensing the World: The Absolute Threshold
The minimum stimulation necessary to detect reliability a particular stimuli is called the absolute threshold. Thresholds can vary depending on a person's experience and expectations, or level of fatigue. A remarkable qu..
Connections: Sensing the World: The Difference Threshold
Humans, as well as other animal species, have the ability to detect small variations in stimuli (the difference threshold) . The fact that sensitivity is reduced after sustained exposure to stimuli, like the clothes a pe..
Connections: Sensory Signals: Destination Cortex
The ultimate destination for sensory signals is the cerebral cortex. The cortex is a crumpled sheet, a few millimeters thick, wrapped around the exterior of the brain. In the primary visual cortex there is a hierarchy of..
Connections: Social Class
For children growing up, opportunities and limitations, as well as the degree of parental involvement, are often linked to social class.
Connections: Sociologists at Work
Much of sociology involves analyzing the limits and constraints society imposes on individuals. But the notion that change is possible and that problems can be solved is a critical aspect of sociology as well. Frequently..
Connections: Students Rising Above
Although she's a TV news anchor/reporter and not a sociologist, Wendy Tokuda has helped change the world of many young people in the San Francisco Bay area. Her series, "Students Rising Above," profiles a group of remark..
Connections: World of Sensory Stimuli, A
As attuned as people think they are to the world, their senses take in only a fraction of the energy that surrounds them. Most animal species have many more than the five primary senses ascribed to humans. Many animals h..
Connections: countdown
What happens when you combine a carbon arc light, a billiard ball coating, a spoked wheel and consecutive images? Motion pictures! Complex and sometimes incredible events led to Thomas Edison's remarkable invention; the ..
Connections: death in the morning
How did a test of gold's purity revolutionize the world 2,500 years ago and lead to the atomic bomb? Standardizing precious metal in coins stimulated trade from Greece to Persia, causing the construction of a huge commer..
Connections: distant voices
Telecommunications exist because the Normans wore stirrups at the Battle of Hastings - a simple advance that caused a revolution in the increasingly expensive science of warfare. Europe turned its attention to making mon..