Have you ever jumped on a trampoline and, in the process of jumping, created a whole lot of static electricity? What did you do then? Did you shock your friend? Whenever I play with electricity on a trampoline, I like to dare my friends to touch the outlying metal frame of the trampoline. That way, only one of us gets hurt, and it's not me. Where am I going with this? Well, let me tell you.
A couple of months ago, I was in my gym class. My friends and I were bouncing a basketball around, and we figured out how to generate static electricity from the basketball (which was a really fun find). We then commenced to shock one another after generating a large amount of static electricity. This has been going on for some time. But earlier this week, one of my friends and I decided to try and create a human circuit. (You can probably tell where this is going.) I put one of my fingers on my right hand on the metal on our gym bleachers, then I stuck my other finger from my left hand out where my friend could touch it. She then generated some electricity and put her finger onto mine. What a shock, literally! I could feel the electricity pulse through my left hand and exit out of my right, straight into the metal bleachers. It was fantastic! We then wondered how many people it would take to dilute the effect of this static shock. We rounded up a few willing participants, and we had them all connect fingers, with the last person touching the metal. I generated enough electricity for it to be a real shock, then I touched the first person's finger. They all shouted, "Ow!" almost at the same time! It was the most fun I've ever had in gym. Not because I caused my fellow classmates pain, but because my friend and I discovered something we hadn't thought about before. Sure, some basketball player probably had a shock every once and a while, and this effect was probably well-known to the basketball-playing community, but had anyone ever thought of creating a human circuit with this power? It was a very interesting experiment, one that resulted in my fascination with curiosity.
What causes us to have these questions pop up into our heads when we come in to contact with a new idea? How did my friend and I jump from "Let's shock each other," to "How long of a human circuit can we create"? This piqued my curiosity on the subject of curiosity, so I researched a little bit.
Basically, curiosity (according to what I've read) is humans innate ability to question why things happen the way they do. We see something we want to know about and our brain activity flares up, making the parts of our brain that deal with memory (like the hippocampus) or attentiveness and comprehension (like the inferior frontal gyrus or the basal ganglia) become more active than normal. This certain brain activity also suggests that there are some parts of the brain activated that deal with this new information like a reward. Our lovely hippocampus, which deals with long-term memory, is activated especially when we incorrectly answer a question. We then, strangely, become more intent on the right answer, which has a better chance of appearing in our brains than what we had for breakfast last Sunday. The psychology is harder to grasp. In fact, I haven't found a direct answer to why we humans feel curiosity. Everything I've read sort of skids around the subject and focuses more on what does happen while we feel curiosity, not why it happens. This is because this topic is highly controversial. And why not? Don't we all feel fascinated by different subjects? If you're wondering, the answer is yes. I'm sure some of you who've read this probably don't care about what two teenagers can do with a basketball and metal bleachers. And I'm also sure some of you are typing in "electricity" into Google. The fact is, we humans all feel curiosity. We might pretend we don't with certain topics (something considered boring like math or science) but we can't help but question why the world is the way it is. And that, my friends, is something I don't think the humans are going to get over any time soon.
2 comments:
I think curiosity is universal.
Take for instance one of our high school science classes. We were studying electricity - specifically a Lyden's Jar.
(Speaking of curiosity, I bet you are googling "Lyden's Jar" as we speak - trying to reward your hippocampus, inferior frontal gyrus or your basal ganglia!)
After building our own "home brew" Lyden's Jar - it occurred to us to try the same thing you did. We ended up with the entire class in a hand-in-hand circle when we discharged the Lyden's Jar!
We also all yelled OWW! at the same time!
Like I said, I think curiosity is universal!!
It also killed the cat. I'm starting to wonder whether or not this particular cat was playing with some major electrical equipment. It would make so much more sense if he was.
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