May 4

Gummy Bears and Rainbow Colored Candy;  What Do They Have in Common?

By Erin Moore

Our meeting for Monday May 4th began with a picnic in the Buckley’s driveway. We discussed future meetings and events. We gave a recap of the Townsend bike ride and pizza party at Cycology, for those who were not in attendance. Mike Milley gave a presentation and thoughts on his visit to Appey Hour at Ettac.

Rounding off the evening with a little fun was Lakensie, performing a blind taste test using skittles and gummy bears. The hypothesis being people who are totally blind from birth cannot distinguish between the different flavors of the candy. Does vision truly play a role in tasting the different flavors? Sue was able to recognize the most flavors out of all the participants. There were six people polled. Three of the participants were blind from birth and three who either are low vision or who had vision at one point.

To sum up, the group consensus was color did factor in aiding and discerning the flavors of the skittles for those who experienced vision verses those individuals without sight. However, the gummy bear experiment resulted in the color not being a determining factor in identifying the flavor of the candy in either group.