For our project, we chose a concept that relates to energy and then presented that concept in a TED Talk format. The concept my partner and I chose was the Fight or Flight reaction (or FoF for short). Basically, the FoF reaction is a series of triggers and reactions in your body cause by some sort of outside stimuli. Your body will sense something, determine it's a threat, and react to it before your eyes even register it. The electrical energy of your brain gets converted to chemical and hormonal releases in your body and then into mechanical energy in the form of bodily movement. It's absolutely fascinating. During our TED Talk, we performed an experiment on an audience member and then gave a detailed presentation about the Fof response. For our experiment we took an audience member (a volunteer), put earmuffs and a blindfold on them, and tied them to a chair. Then we touched them with a variety of objects from rubber gloves to wire to induce the reaction. Since the subject couldn't see the object, their body assumed it was a threat and initiated the response. To summarize what we learnt: when sensory nerve cells perceive a threat they send electrical signals to the amygdala, which contributes to emotional processing. When the threat is recognized the information is sent to the hypothalamus, which signals the adrenal glands to trigger the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline increases heart rates and blood pressure to supply the muscles with more blood, and fats are released from storage to provide more energy to the body. After the initial rush, the HPA axis uses a complex system of chemical releases and triggers to release cortisol into the system. Cortisol is a steroid hormone, aiding in the metabolism of fat and suppressing the immune system. Once the threat passes, the parasympathetic system in the autonomic nervous system takes over and promotes ¨rest and digest¨.
In Multimedia we created hologram videos in Final Cut Pro to show light energy. We did this by making a video and then editing it (in Final Cut Pro) so that there were four copies of the video at each of the compass points playing simultaneously. Then, we constructed a hologram viewer out of plastic which was made of four trapezoids with an empty square in the middle. Finally, we put the viewer on top of the device playing the video and voila, you have a hologram.