First Post Here – Does everything in life excrete a gas? When you think about the act of ‘smelling’ something, you’re usually not physically touching your nose to it. Does this mean everything that smells like anything in life technically lets off a gas?

Question

First Post Here – Does everything in life excrete a gas? When you think about the act of ‘smelling’ something, you’re usually not physically touching your nose to it. Does this mean everything that smells like anything in life technically lets off a gas?

In: 71

Answer 1

You are right. Everything that you can smell emits a gas, or vapor. The molecules of that vapor get into your nose where there are 400 different types of smell detector (receptor).

Each type of detector reacts to a different set of chemicals. A few different detectors react to each different chemical, so you can detect a lot more than 400 different chemicals.

Depending on which detectors react to the smell, your brain can decide what the smell “means” – good, bad, disgusting, delicious, etc.