Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

For my science project our teacher requires us to interview an expert on our topic. Most of my project is based on perception and estimation, are there any experts on either of these subjects who would be willing to answer some questions of mine and possibly give me some information on the subject of perception? If so please read my questions and reply.
1. What part of the human brain processes estimations?
2. What factors influence a person's estimation of a quantity?
3. When do people generaly need to rely on estimations?

Hi opticallilusion1

Experts are not allowed to contact people through email, so the interview questions need to be posted on the Ask an Expert Forum. Here are some more rules about interviews: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... =25&t=4489

I highly suggest you make the questions relatively general (i.e. instead of asking about optical illusions, ask about working in physical science (light) or behavioral science (perception) ). Very few of our Experts (if any) actually do work with optical illusions. Many students have been posting interviews and have such specific questions that our Experts can't answer them since they don't work on that specific topic. If your teacher has given you these questions, explain that they need to be more general.

If the interview questions include background research questions about your topic (e.g. what is an optical illusion? or how does an optical illusion work?), we will try to help you find some resources to look up the answers, but that is not the purpose of the Ask an Expert Forum and you probably won't get specific answers from an expert (it is your job to do the research and answer those types of questions). However, if you did background research and tried to answer the questions yourself and don't understand a particular concept, we can help you out.

The interview questions need to something like asking the Expert about working in a certain field (physics, chemistry, etc.), or how the Expert became interested in science, etc.

So I would go ahead and post your interview questions here, assuming that they follow the above guidelines.

Good luck with your project!