Tongue Mapping
Your tongue is the organ that gives you your sense of taste. The parts of your tongue
that can taste are balled taste buds. Thousands of these taste buds cover your tongue.
They are in the little bumps that make your tongue look rough. About 200 taste buds
are in each little bump on your tongue. Each of the taste buds are hooked to a nerve
that leads to your brain and your brain tells you what
you are tasting!
There are four main tastes that we can taste. They
are sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Each part of your
tongue can taste one of theses. Experiment with
tongue mapping and see if you can determine which
area of your tongue tastes which of these four tastes.
Materials:

Salt Taste: Salty water

Sugar Taste: Sugary water

Sour Taste: Lemon juice

Bitter Taste: Onion juice or cocoa water

Q-tips

Colored pencils and paper to draw tongue map
Procedure:
1. Place a small amount of the sugar, salt, lemon juice, and cocoa powder
into four small cups.
2. Add a tablespoon of water to each of the items in the cups. You don’t
need to add water to the lemon juice. Use separate mixing tools for each
solution.
3. Blindfold the test subject.
4. Choose one solution to test. Experiment with one solution at a time. Dip a
Q-tip into the first test solution and touch the subject’s tongue in a variety
of places, until they can taste it. Mark on your blank tongue map where
each taste is tasted.
5. Repeat the process in 4 above with each of the test solutions.
6. Test different people and compare the tongue maps.
Challenge!
The tongue is a muscular organ found in the mouth of most vertebrates. In some
animals, such as snakes, it is a sensory organ. In amphibians and some reptiles the
tongue is used to capture insect prey. In mammals, the tongue helps in chewing,
tasting, and swallowing, as well as other uses such as grooming and capturing prey. Do
some research to find out how some specific animals use their tongues.
Our sense of smell helps us to taste what we are eating. When you are sick and your
nose is plugged, you cannot taste as much. Try eating somethign with your nose
plugged and your eyes closed. Can you tell what you ate? What food did you try?
What foods were you able to detect with a plugged nose? What food were you not able
to taste?