Week 15 A&P Lab & Inquiry: Test Your Own Senses

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that every sense organ does two jobs: it captures a stimulus, then converts it into a nerve signal the brain can read. Light travels cornea, pupil, lens, retina; sound travels from the eardrum through the malleus, incus, and stapes to the cochlea; and taste and smell both run on chemoreceptors. In this lab you test those ideas on your own senses and on a free virtual atlas. You find your own blind spot with a dot-and-cross card, taste a food with your nose pinched and then open, and locate eight eye and ear structures, sorting each one by organ, job, and receptor class. Then you check a chatbot's account of the same structures and catch where it mislabels a structure, gives a structure the wrong job, scrambles an order, miscounts, confuses where a structure sits, or invents a number.

Time budget: Plan for about 120 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Can you trace light, sound, and a food's chemicals to the structure that converts each one into a nerve signal, and use two at-home demonstrations to show where a sense depends on a particular structure?

Before you begin — hypothesis: Before you test anything, write your hypothesis in the if… then… because… form: if you pinch your nose while tasting a food, then its flavor will change in a way you can describe, because of a reason you can state about which receptors the pinched nose blocks.

Workshop data: Your own identifications of eight eye and ear structures on a free virtual atlas and your own two at-home sense demonstrations, or the printed fallback descriptions

Source: Eight structure identifications you make yourself on a free virtual anatomy atlas, plus your own blind-spot and taste-without-smell observations, following the procedure in Part 3; if you cannot open an atlas or run the demonstrations, use the ten printed descriptions in the fallback, which were written for this lab as an illustrative stand-in.

• Rows: 11 observations: 8 structures, one row each in the structure table, and 3 demonstration notes, one row each in the demonstration table; the planning table has 3 rows that set up the hypothesis rather than data
• Columns: for structures: organ, job, and receptor class or captures only; for demonstrations: what you noticed and the structure that explains it

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet)

Ways of working

• structure-identification-on-a-virtual-atlas
• histology-on-a-virtual-microscope
• at-home-physiology-measurement-and-data-table

Procedure

1. Open a free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer that needs no login, in any web browser, and go to its view of the eye. If your instructor names a particular atlas, use that one. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The atlas's eye view is open.
2. Before you identify or test anything, write your hypothesis and the atlas views you chose in the first table in Part 4. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The first table has its three cells filled.
3. In the eye view, find the cornea, the lens, the retina, and the optic disc. Click or hover on each to confirm its name, then switch to the ear view and find the tympanic membrane, the malleus, the cochlea, and the semicircular canals. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: All eight structures have been found and their names confirmed.
4. For each structure, record in the structure table the organ it belongs to, its job, and its receptor class if it converts a stimulus into a nerve signal, or write captures only if it does not. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: Every row of the structure table has an organ, a job, and a receptor-class entry.
5. Find your blind spot. On a blank card, draw a small dot and, a hand's width to its right, a small cross. Hold the card at arm's length, close your right eye, look only at the cross with your left eye, and bring the card slowly toward your face until the dot disappears; keep going until it comes back. Note the rough distance from your eye at which the dot vanished, which is your own value, not a norm. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The dot disappeared at one distance and reappeared closer in, and the demonstration table has your observation.
6. Run the taste-without-smell test. Pinch your nose closed and taste a small piece of a food you already eat; note what you can and cannot tell about it. Then let go, take another piece, and note what changed. Stop at any discomfort and use the fallback instead. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The demonstration table has a nose-pinched note and a nose-open note.
7. Check every row of all three tables against Chapter 15, then answer the analysis questions in Part 5 and complete the critique in Part 6. Tool: A free virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer (Innerbody, GetBodySmart), a virtual microscope for histology (Histology Guide), free physiology simulations (PhET pH Scale, Membrane Channels, Neuron, Gene Expression Essentials), and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: Every analysis question has a written answer.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you cannot open a free virtual anatomy atlas, if the atlas will not load on your device, if you have no card or food for the demonstrations, or if a demonstration is uncomfortable.

Use the ten printed descriptions below, written for this lab as an illustrative stand-in for an atlas view and for the two demonstrations, to fill every cell of the structure table and the demonstration table, then complete every analysis question and the critique from them and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Ten printed descriptions of eye and ear structures and of the two demonstrations, written for this lab as an illustrative stand-in for an atlas and for your own observations.

Fallback model data

Structure or demonstration	What the description shows
Cornea	The clear, curved window at the very front of the eye, where light first enters
Lens	A clear, flexible disc behind the pupil that changes shape to focus near or far
Retina	The thin layer lining the back of the eye, holding the rods and cones
Optic disc	A small spot on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye, with no rods or cones
Tympanic membrane	A thin membrane at the inner end of the ear canal that shakes when sound arrives
Malleus	The first tiny bone of the middle ear, attached to the eardrum
Cochlea	A fluid-filled part of the inner ear holding hair cells for hearing
Semicircular canals	Fluid-filled loops of the inner ear with hair cells at their bases that sense the head turning
Blind-spot demonstration (illustrative)	With the right eye closed and the left eye on the cross, the dot disappeared partway between arm's length and the face, then came back closer in
Taste test (illustrative)	With the nose pinched, a piece of fruit tasted mainly sweet and its fruity aroma was missing; with the nose open, the full flavor came back

Part 4 — The Scaffold

State your question and hypothesis before you test, so the demonstrations check an idea instead of confirming a guess.

Student scaffold table 1

Part of the plan	Your answer
The guiding question in your own words
Hypothesis (if… then… because…)
The atlas views you used for the eye and the ear

Record what you noticed in each at-home demonstration and name the structure that explains it.

Student scaffold table 2

Demonstration	What you noticed	Structure that explains it
Blind spot: the rough distance at which the dot vanished, your own value
Taste with the nose pinched
Taste with the nose open

Read each structure from its organ to its job to its receptor class, so you can see which structures capture and which convert.

Student scaffold table 3

Structure	Organ	Job	Receptor class, or captures only
Cornea
Lens
Retina
Optic disc
Tympanic membrane
Malleus
Cochlea
Semicircular canals

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. In your blind-spot demonstration, which structure on the retina explains the vanishing dot, and what does that structure lack? Use your demonstration table and your structure table.
2. In your taste test, what changed between the nose-pinched piece and the nose-open piece? Explain the change using the five basic tastes, the olfactory epithelium, and the idea that flavor is mostly smell.
3. From your structure table, name the structures that convert a stimulus into a nerve signal and the receptor class in each, and explain why the other structures only capture or pass the stimulus along.
4. Name one way the at-home demonstrations or the on-screen atlas differ from a careful laboratory measurement, and explain how that difference could change what you concluded about your blind spot or about flavor.
5. Choose one reflection and answer it in three to five sentences: (a) which row of your structure table would be easiest for a classmate to get wrong, and what cue would you give them? (b) which of this week's swapped pairs (rods and cones, the cochlea and the semicircular canals, taste and flavor) did this lab help you keep apart, and how?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed Week 15 structure table and demonstration table above. For each of the eight structures, tell me its organ, its job, and whether it converts a stimulus into a nerve signal, and if so which receptor class does it. Then explain why a dot vanishes during the dot-and-cross card test, say which photoreceptors detect color and which work in dim light, list the middle-ear ossicles in order from the eardrum, say which inner-ear structure makes a room seem to spin after a chair stops, and work out how many ossicles both ears hold. If you use any measurement or study, give its source.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often say the dot vanishes because its image falls on the fovea, mixing up the sharpest spot with the blind spot.
• Chatbots sometimes reverse the photoreceptors, saying rods detect color and cones work in dim light.
• Chatbots sometimes multiply wrong when counting the ossicles, reporting 3 ossicles in each ear × 2 ears as 9.
• Chatbots often scramble the ossicles, listing the incus or the stapes first.
• Chatbots sometimes place the lens in front of the cornea or give balance to the cochlea, confusing which structure sits where and does what.
• Asked about the blind spot or taste, chatbots often supply a blind-spot distance that everyone shares or a count of taste buds that this lab never gave.

In three to five sentences, quote at least two statements from the chatbot that you corrected, give the correction with evidence from your tables or Chapter 15, and name one thing the chatbot got right.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this lab. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "In my tables, the dot vanished because its image fell on the fovea, which has no photoreceptors. Rods let me see the colors in my bright kitchen, and cones take over in the dark. Sound passes the incus first, then the malleus, then the stapes. The lens sits in front of the cornea, so light reaches the lens first, and the cochlea is what made my room keep spinning after the chair stopped. The three ossicles in each ear make 3 × 2 = 9 ossicles in both ears. A study found that the dot vanishes at exactly 27 cm for everyone." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (a mislabeled structure, a wrong structure-to-function pairing, steps out of order, a miscomputed value, a confused position or job, or an invented figure), cite the evidence from your tables or Chapter 15, and write a corrected sentence beneath it. This route assesses the same objectives (Objective 8 and Objective 3) as the chatbot critique, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 200–300 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed analysis, posted in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All three completed scaffold tables, filled from your own atlas work and demonstrations or the printed fallback descriptions
• Written answers to all five analysis questions, including your chosen reflection option
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short A&P Lab & Inquiry report on testing your own senses: three completed tables (the plan with your hypothesis, the demonstration table with your blind-spot and taste observations, and the eight-structure table with organs, jobs, and receptor classes), written answers to five analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's account of your structures and demonstrations, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, recorded, or visual form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Hypothesis and views set before testing	An if… then… because… hypothesis about how pinching the nose will change flavor appears before the demonstrations, and the student names the atlas views or fallback used.	A hypothesis appears but lacks a because clause or is written after the demonstrations, or the views used are missing or unclear.	No hypothesis and no statement of the views used.
Demonstration table with observations and explaining structures	All three demonstration rows carry a specific observation, the blind-spot distance is recorded as the student's own value, and the optic disc and smell, through the olfactory epithelium, are named as the explaining structures.	Two rows are complete, or an explaining structure is wrong, such as the fovea for the blind spot or the taste buds for the pinched-nose change.	Fewer than two rows are complete, or the table is missing.
Structure table with correct organs, jobs, and receptor classes	All eight structures carry the correct organ and job, the retina is marked with photoreceptors, the cochlea and the semicircular canals with mechanoreceptors, and the other five are marked captures only.	Five to seven structures are fully correct, or rods and cones are swapped, or the cochlea is given balance.	Fewer than five structures are correct, or the table is missing.
Analysis in words	Questions 1 to 4 are answered accurately: the optic disc and its missing photoreceptors, the taste change explained by blocked aroma and flavor being mostly smell, the three converting structures with their receptor classes, and one concrete limitation of the demonstrations or atlas; the chosen reflection option is answered.	The questions are attempted, but one or two answers name the wrong structure, swap a pair, or give a vague limitation.	The analysis questions are not answered.
Critique of the chatbot or of the printed flawed analysis	On either route, at least two errors are quoted and corrected with evidence from the student's own tables or Chapter 15, and one correct point is acknowledged; both routes earn this band equally.	On either route, errors are named but corrected without evidence, or only one error is caught.	No critique appears on either route, or pasted output is submitted without any checking.

Quality Gate

• Every identification comes from your own atlas work or the printed fallback descriptions, never from memory or a chatbot.
• Your blind-spot distance is recorded as your own value and is never compared with a norm.
• Every structure that converts a stimulus names its receptor class, and every other structure is marked captures only.
• The light path and the ossicles are written in their fixed order.
• No measurement, study, or source is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence from your tables or Chapter 15.