Topic : Human Body

Our five senses give us some astonishing capabilities. We can see a candle’s flame 30 miles away on a dark, clear night, and smell a single drop of perfume diffused in a three-room apartment. We can taste .04 ounce of table salt in 530 quarts of water. Our sense of touch can detect a pressure that depresses the skin .00004 inch on the face or fingertips. And we can tell where a sound is coming from even when it arrives at one ear just .0003 second before its arrival at the other ear.

Today in the Word, November, 1996, p. 28.

If your senses are working normally, you can:

• Feel on your fingertips or face a pressure that depresses your skin a bare .00004 inch.
• See a small candle flame from 30 miles away on a clear, dark night.
• Smell one drop of perfume diffused through a three-room apartment.
• Taste .04 ounce of table salt dissolved in 530 quarts of water.
• Feel the weight of a bee’s wing falling on your cheek from less than half an inch away.
• Distinguish among more than 300,000 different color variations.
• Gauge the direction of a sound’s origin based on a .00003-second difference in its arrival from one ear to the other.

John D. McGervey and Bill Sones in Buffalo (N.Y.) News Magazine, quoted in Readers Digest, May 1996, p. 91.