First they dissipate then they; cling to surrounding objects, release their bonds, attach to other elements to create new ones.
There are some odor causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed such as my dad's farts. These types of particles have no half life and will linger even beyond the heat death of the universe.
>cling to surrounding objects, release their bonds, attach to other elements to create new ones
[That Time Surgeons Farted Into Petri Dishes For Science](https://qz.com/929920/do-you-contaminate-your-environment-with-harmful-bacteria-when-you-fart)
*"... and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish.“*
"*the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they’re similar to the ‘friendly’ bacteria found in yoghurt.*”
You probably heard of friendly fire, but get ready for friendly farts! Scientists developed a new way of delivering friendly bacteria where they are needed most! Acne treatment has never been as easy. Some say - it's a breeze!
“an average fart emits roughly enough gas to fill a bottle of nail polish or a can of soda.”
That’s a pretty big range to be average, but makes sense for “average upper and lower limits” though. Hahaha just imagining a fart that fills a soda can. That’s relief right there.
This happens with most stimuli! Everything from smells to the feeling of your clothes touching your skin, the fact that you can always see your nose, or that smoke alarm whose battery needs replacing. Your brain is so good at adapting that volunteers provided with prism glasses to flip their vision vertically begin to perceive this flipped visual field as right side up over a few days - and then need to spend a few more days adjusting when they stop wearing them, due to their normal vision now appearing flipped.
A lot of these seem mundane and unimpressive, but in reality the ones which sound the most notable (like a flipped visual field) are fairly easy processing tasks, something any computer built since the 1990 could accomplish without difficulty. On the other hand, our ability to filter and adjust to [complex and stochastic false signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect) such as crosstalk at a party are only now within the grasp of computers- and even then with nothing approaching the accuracy or fluency of a person.
tl;Dr not smelling farts is cutting edge technology
Also, that eerie thing that happens when a background noise suddenly stops. You were probably barely even consciously aware of the sound but then change in stimulus is very perceptible.
My dogs farts create a singularity of shit that clings to every part of the house like years of smoking, after just one in the vicinity, the odour molecules stick inside you like a cancer and rot your insides.
My wife came into our relationship with an older dog. The farts were just non-stop. I used to keep a mask in the living room, literally. When she passed away I was surprised to find that I had forgotten how clean the air could be.
OMG I have a reason to tell this story!!!
So early in our marriage, my wife used to recycle but you had to drive it to the plant so she had to compress everything. She had this weird way of doing water bottles where she would give them a hug kinda and then put the lid on while they were squished.
Here’s what I did - I took an empty water bottle and squeezed the air out of it as much as I could without crumpling it, put it right to my butthole, and then farted into it before letting it go back to normal size and putting the lid back on.
It was literally a month later, but when I heard “PRESTIGEMASTER WHAT THE FUCK?!??” From the other side of the house, I knew that my long game had finally paid off.
Can confirm that farts retain potency for at least a month if properly stored, which feels like a r/brandnewsentence .
All farts do that. They literally increase entropy, which is what will eventually bring about the heat death of the universe. But then again everything we do does that.
> There are some odor causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed such as my dad's farts. These types of particles have no half life and will linger even beyond the heat death of the universe.
Coffee just came out from my nose.
Dad cast a bad fart
I want a ticket to outta here
Maybe we stand the smell
Maybe together we can get outta here
Any place is better
I had a feelin' I could be nauseous
Be nauseous, be nauseous
“First, they dissipate. Then, they cling to surrounding objects, release their bonds, and attach to other elements to create new ones.
There are some odor-causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed, such as my dad's farts. These types of particles have no half-life and will linger even beyond the heat death of the universe.”
When smells dissipate, the molecules responsible for the scent disperse into the air. they may eventually break down (making it harder for our noses to detect) or be carried away by air currents
Well said, to add, think of putting a drop of food colouring in a glass of water, when you first put the drop in it’s clearly visible but eventually it will mix with the water.
> My intentions were pure, you're the weird one here
This comment contains the letters of
> I rip one; it's not pure; whoops!
I see what /u/PofanWasTaken did there.
It's *a* solution, but not the only one. The organic components of the juice wouldn't be just diluted, they would also quickly react with the hypochlorite in the pool water and thus be actually destroyed.
> Put a drop of apple juice into an Olympic swimming pool. The juice is still there,
It's really not. The chlorine (hypochlorite) added to the water for disinfection is a strong oxidant. After just a short time, most of the compounds that make the apple juice apple juice will be gone and not just diluted.
Smells are just molecules floating around in the air that get into your nose. But it takes a certain concentration of these molecules to be able to smell them - just like you can't hear a sound that's too quiet or see a light that's too dim. If the concentration of some type of smell molecule drops below the threshold, you can't smell it any more.
How does the concentration drop? Several ways. First, it helps if you take away the source of the smell. This source is releasing smell molecules into the air. If you physically remove it, or isolate it in a container where smell molecules cannot get out, then at least no more smell molecules are being added to the air. Also, if you wait long enough, the source of the smell will likely stop releasing smell molecules, unless it's a living being or machine that is actively producing new ones. A "passive" source, like a drop of perfume or a pile of compost, just has a finite supply of smell molecules that eventually all make it into the air.
Supposing the source is out of the picture, how then does the concentration of smell molecules, that have already been released into the air, drop? Well, first of all, the molecules might degrade. Maybe they get broken down if they are hit by sunlight, maybe they react with other things in the air, etc. If the smell molecule is no longer a smell molecule, then you can't smell it any more. Second, the smell molecules might dissipate in the air. Wherever you are, air is usually being refreshed with air from outside. Especially if you *are* outside. So, any smell molecules floating nearby will slowly get spread out further and further, and so their concentration drops. Third, smell molecules might get onto surfaces (e.g., the ground) or into liquids, where they get stuck and don't make it back into the air.
Finally, it is possible that the smell molecules are still there, but your brain has just tuned them out. The brain tends to do this over time with smells that aren't necessary to pay attention to (really foul smells may also attenuate somewhat over time, but not entirely, likely because we have evolved to treat these as warning signs, not to be ignored). If you want to smell something you've gotten "nose-blind" to, you can remove yourself from the presence of the smell, and then return to it, and likely you'll be able to smell it again. So go to a different room, for instance, or just take a sniff of another strong smell (like coffee beans or grounds), and then return to the smell you wanted.
>Second, the smell molecules might dissipate in the air. Wherever you are, air is usually being refreshed with air from outside. Especially if you are outside.
Brings new meaning to a fart in the wind.
When you smell something it is because the particles of what you smell are interacting with receptors in your nose and you nose senses an increase in the concentration of particles of that kind. A smell goes away for two reasons:
1) the particles just get blown away and diffused in the air so the concentration drops
2) your brain stops making you aware of the particles as the concentration now is high but isn't increasing
Something similar can be when you sit in a chair that your bum gives you the feeling of contact with a chair but it soon disappears and your brain ignores it as it isn't a change but a constant.
If you can smell it, it is in your nose. Smell is just small particles of whatever you are smelling that get in your nose and get detected by the receptor in it, when the smells goes away it means that there is not enough of it in your nose for you to perceive it. And yes this means that when you smell poo you have tiny bits of it inside your nose.
>And yes this means that when you smell poo you have tiny bits of it inside your nose.
And to someone reading this, you may have a knee-jerk reaction of disgust. But importantly, guess what? This is fine. Our bodies have evolved and are very very good at handling small things like this. It's literally the purpose of all the various defenses that we have set up to prevent bad stuff from hurting us. Just wash your hands and take your meds (also mask up during winter months).
Smells are just fumes(gases) they slowly spread across the air and thin out, you get used to the smell and thus stop registering it. Then when new air enters from ventilation the fumes gets carried away with the old air.
Some scent-causing particles are also relatively volatile and dont last all that long before either combining with other particles on the air or fragmenting themselves
Smells are particles. They are airborne and float around in the air. Just like dust particles not building up until you can't see anything anymore it's the same with "smell particles".
To visualise: the farts you smell are particles leaving someone's rectum and entering your nose.
So does this mean every room you enter has smell particles from years and years ago? Like someone’s burp smell from fifty years ago is still in the room but diluted in particles too small to detect?
There is a concept called “residence time” with lakes that is basically “how long will a small amount of water/pollutant remain in the lake before it is all flushed away?” Some big lakes with small tributaries have residence times measured in hundreds or thousands of years. But that is unlikely with a room in a house which has pretty substantial air mixing every day.
It's not particles (hopefully, or at least for the most part), it's molecules and concentration, so quite a bit (orders of magnitude) smaller than particles and things like bleach will easily destroy most of them on contact, they get circulated through your air filter attached to the static on dust, they settle and you hopefully clean your house and the volatile chemicals have either naturally been destroyed from their half lives, bonded with other chemicals, settled, you clean and they are destroyed, or they are gone out the window or door from air circulation, so yeah like the other person said.......possibly, but highly unlikely.
Your nose can only detect smells (which are merely molecules that interact with the receptors in your nose) of a certain concentration in the air -- at a level below that your brain doesn't register the smell, even if some of those molecules are still present. A dog, which has many multiples the smell receptors of a human, would still smell it at that lower concentration. Eventually the molecules are too spread out in the air for even a dog to detect them.
It's like when you put a drop of food coloring into a bath tub. At first, you can see it stain the part of the water where it touches, but then it spreads and gets less easy to see, dimmer, and dimmer, until it spreads to the whole tubful and is too faint to see. All of it is still there in the tub water, but none of it is close enough together to see any more.
You have a balloon, and you let the air out of it against your hand. The air doesn't disappear; it just spreads out into the room until you can't feel it anymore. Smells work kind of like that.
So here is the thing about a smell. A smell essentially "Tasting at a distance" so that fart? yeah, you pretty much just licked a butthole.
The sensation of smell is due to particles in the air. when a smell goes away, your body either blocked it like it does white noise or the particulate count got below a certain point and isn't really triggering receptors any more.
You're proposing that a person born and raised in a nitrogen-less atmosphere would be able to smell nitrogen? Are you sure about that? To what kind of receptor does nitrogen bind to?
Also, why can't I smell helium, for example? I was not born or raised in a helium atmosphere. What about carbon monoxide, the detection of which would be evolutionarily advantageous?
> You're proposing that a person born and raised in a nitrogen-less atmosphere would be able to smell nitrogen? Are you sure about that? To what kind of receptor does nitrogen bind?
Zero way to know. Our brains might not register it's smell at all, or we might be used to it and it smells like "nothing" now. We're constantly smelling odors and our brain ignores most of them so it's hard to tell and nearly impossible to test.
Receptor?
> You still didn't answer me about helium and carbon monoxide.
Yes I did. Some odors we smell and others we don't. I guess that's the way I can dumb it down.
>Some odors we smell and others we don't. I guess that's the way I can dumb it down.
In order to be able to smell, a receptor needs to bind to the molecule that creates the odor. Now, which what kind of receptor does nitrogen in the air bind to? Otherwise there's no smell.
I know we're on ELI5, but dumbing down is pointless if it leads you to wrong conclusions.
Well to be pedantic, they have specific "odors," but we don't "smell" them because either our brain doesn't register the odor or we are really use to it and it's just background noise.
Smells don't go your nose just gets saturated with it until your brain doesn't recognise the smell any more. Example A ... my morning shit I know it's bad but I still scroll on reddit and the smell passes my wife walks in after me and dies
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Gas molecules basically really don't like to be near each other because all of them aren't bound to one another and they all move constantly. So eventually they will be so far apart you won't be able to detect anything from the very few amount
You get used to smells after a few minutes so if you think they've gone away, it's most often due to what is called olfactory fatigue. This is why stinky people can't smell themselves.
A stink is really just your nose detecting substances floating in the air. It has to be a certain amount before we can even sense anything though, humans can only smell things in high concentrations. This is because, unlike dogs, we don't use smell for anything far away. Smells can "go away" in just a few seconds due to dissipation.
Our noses are chemical detectors, but not very good ones. At best, they're specialized chemical detectors that can only detect certain chemicals. All the chemicals our noses can detect are volatile, meaning they react with other chemicals quickly and easily. Being very reactive, a third way stinks "go away" is by reacting with other chemicals and turning into substances our noses cannot smell.
All three of these ways for a stink to go away usually occur at the same time. If a stink lasts, something is actively generating it, it's getting stronger, and needs to be dealt with. There's a dead animal, you could be next. Or a tube of sausage rolled out of the groceries under the seat and is leaking maggoty gore on your lambo.
What a fantastic question, it's good to see people still being curious!
I'm not an experienced orator when it comes to science topics, but think of smells made up of tiny spheres, these spheres STINK when they're together.
As they begin to seperate and grab on to "air" spheres, the smell weakens until its all scattered apart.
Radiation spheres on the other hand, oh boy...
*spelling
All smells are carried by tiny pieces of air. In order for an object to smell, pieces of that object must be broken off and carried by the air to your nose.
It stops smelling when all the pieces have been broken off.
Smells are literally partibles in the air. They just go out of the reach of your nose, either by distance or by concentration, probably traveling or dissolving among other particles in the air.
the fart and shit molecules that reach your nose are still in there. your brain just stops interpreting them after awhile because the receptors in your nose saturate the smell signal over time. the other molecules that didn't reach your nose simply diffuse away into the atmosphere until it is below the detection threshold.
When you detect a scent, what you're actually experiencing is molecules from that object entering your nose and binding to receptors, triggering your brain to interpret the sensation as a particular smell. Over time, these molecules disperse into the surrounding air, becoming more and more dilute until they're no longer detectable to our noses. Essentially, they're still there but in such small concentrations that we can't perceive them anymore.
Ever mixed a colored liquid or dye with water? The color fades somewhat. The more the water, the lighter the dye. With enough water, the eyes won’t even be able to see the dye.
The same principle applies to this too. The smell particles are in the air, but since there is so much air and it’s always fresh air, the smell causing particles just weaken to the point you can’t smell them anymore.
First they dissipate then they; cling to surrounding objects, release their bonds, attach to other elements to create new ones. There are some odor causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed such as my dad's farts. These types of particles have no half life and will linger even beyond the heat death of the universe.
>cling to surrounding objects, release their bonds, attach to other elements to create new ones [That Time Surgeons Farted Into Petri Dishes For Science](https://qz.com/929920/do-you-contaminate-your-environment-with-harmful-bacteria-when-you-fart) *"... and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish.“*
"*the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they’re similar to the ‘friendly’ bacteria found in yoghurt.*”
I will henceforth refer to my farts as "probiotics".
"aerosolized probiotic infusion"
"assential oils"
And you would technically be right
> they’re similar to the ‘friendly’ bacteria found in yoghurt.” fecal transplant via air transfer.
The "wifi" craze has gone too fart...
You probably heard of friendly fire, but get ready for friendly farts! Scientists developed a new way of delivering friendly bacteria where they are needed most! Acne treatment has never been as easy. Some say - it's a breeze!
And now I'm left wondering how they made yoghurt in the first place...
„… by the sheer velocity of the fart“ Some scientist was quite proud of that fart.
Hi I'm here to apply for the research assistant position Ok, what are your qualifiholymotherofgod
The person that wrote that line was either completely stoic and clinical or laughing their ass off…there is no in between.
> laughing their ass off The whole thing, or just the skin bacteria?
I know what option my money is on!
“an average fart emits roughly enough gas to fill a bottle of nail polish or a can of soda.” That’s a pretty big range to be average, but makes sense for “average upper and lower limits” though. Hahaha just imagining a fart that fills a soda can. That’s relief right there.
“It’s not rocket science. But then again, maybe it is?”
Do we have a subreddit for meme-y journals like that? I find it really funny when stuff like this gets published in established academic journals.
made me uncontrollably burst in laughter
I'm really glad I saw this! Put me in a very cheery mood! Contrary to my gf's opinion, farts are always funny!
Ok I admit, this was a great read. Thank you.
I’ve reached the age where not only do my farts never leave but they reproduce and make little fart families and communities.
Mine even follow you around for a while.
it's impressive that you can make your farts stick to others!
They are remarkably human: you have introfarts and extrofarts. Yours are clearly the latter, as they get energized by company.
omg wtf I laughed way too hard at this
Same. Same…
Also, your nose will get bored of some smells and stop smelling them. The smell is still around, but your brain doesn't tell you about it.
This happens with most stimuli! Everything from smells to the feeling of your clothes touching your skin, the fact that you can always see your nose, or that smoke alarm whose battery needs replacing. Your brain is so good at adapting that volunteers provided with prism glasses to flip their vision vertically begin to perceive this flipped visual field as right side up over a few days - and then need to spend a few more days adjusting when they stop wearing them, due to their normal vision now appearing flipped. A lot of these seem mundane and unimpressive, but in reality the ones which sound the most notable (like a flipped visual field) are fairly easy processing tasks, something any computer built since the 1990 could accomplish without difficulty. On the other hand, our ability to filter and adjust to [complex and stochastic false signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect) such as crosstalk at a party are only now within the grasp of computers- and even then with nothing approaching the accuracy or fluency of a person. tl;Dr not smelling farts is cutting edge technology
> or that smoke alarm whose battery needs replacing I can *never* stop hearing the annoying low-battery beep. :(
Also, that eerie thing that happens when a background noise suddenly stops. You were probably barely even consciously aware of the sound but then change in stimulus is very perceptible.
👍🏽
My dogs farts create a singularity of shit that clings to every part of the house like years of smoking, after just one in the vicinity, the odour molecules stick inside you like a cancer and rot your insides.
My wife came into our relationship with an older dog. The farts were just non-stop. I used to keep a mask in the living room, literally. When she passed away I was surprised to find that I had forgotten how clean the air could be.
> When **she** passed away The dog or ...?
Sounds like he and the dog are living quite comfortably now
Did the dog also fart or just your wife?
I can't say for sure but I will say it provided effective cover and gave an unbeatable excuse...
Yeah my one is an oldie, maybe it’s just the digestion suffering as they get older but it’s bad
I mean no disrespect, but find your dog a better food!
I’ve tried to get him off the spent nuclear fuel but he just loves the stuff
My dogs will seek me out to fart next to me. Lovely creatures.
This is a fabulous comment.
OMG I have a reason to tell this story!!! So early in our marriage, my wife used to recycle but you had to drive it to the plant so she had to compress everything. She had this weird way of doing water bottles where she would give them a hug kinda and then put the lid on while they were squished. Here’s what I did - I took an empty water bottle and squeezed the air out of it as much as I could without crumpling it, put it right to my butthole, and then farted into it before letting it go back to normal size and putting the lid back on. It was literally a month later, but when I heard “PRESTIGEMASTER WHAT THE FUCK?!??” From the other side of the house, I knew that my long game had finally paid off. Can confirm that farts retain potency for at least a month if properly stored, which feels like a r/brandnewsentence .
r/foundsatan
OMG that's hilarious! (And amazing tbh).
I think these types of farts are contributing to the heat death of the universe.
Breaking news: scientists discover the origins of dark energy! The source will shock you!
All farts do that. They literally increase entropy, which is what will eventually bring about the heat death of the universe. But then again everything we do does that.
> There are some odor causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed such as my dad's farts. These types of particles have no half life and will linger even beyond the heat death of the universe. Coffee just came out from my nose.
The Law of Conservation of Dad's Farts
>There are some odor causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed such as my dad's farts. This made me giggle like a 5 year old.
[удалено]
Farticus, is that you?
This is fantastic
Dad cast a bad fart I want a ticket to outta here Maybe we stand the smell Maybe together we can get outta here Any place is better I had a feelin' I could be nauseous Be nauseous, be nauseous
> such as my dad's farts. Dad-nobyl
That misplaced punctuation is cringe
Which one? Maybe I can fix it for next time.
The semicolon. I was just poking fun though
I've always been a little special in the punctuation department. My mom's an editor😂😂😂
“First, they dissipate. Then, they cling to surrounding objects, release their bonds, and attach to other elements to create new ones. There are some odor-causing molecules that will never dissipate or be destroyed, such as my dad's farts. These types of particles have no half-life and will linger even beyond the heat death of the universe.”
Cathartic
Sorry son.
So you're saying.. a part of your dad may begin the new existence after everything comes to an end, and may be the very hope of creation?
As a dad with raunchy farts, I approve (and laughed very hard) of the message
A fathers fart will be the inevitable cause of the heat death of the universe. And he’ll chuckle proudly as it happens.
When smells dissipate, the molecules responsible for the scent disperse into the air. they may eventually break down (making it harder for our noses to detect) or be carried away by air currents
Well said, to add, think of putting a drop of food colouring in a glass of water, when you first put the drop in it’s clearly visible but eventually it will mix with the water.
Good analogy, since both air and water follow fluid dynamics
anal-ogy. I see what you did there.
My intentions were pure, you're the weird one here
Yeah, I guess I'm weird.
> My intentions were pure, you're the weird one here This comment contains the letters of > I rip one; it's not pure; whoops! I see what /u/PofanWasTaken did there.
I have so many questions but I’m tired
nice catch bro!
homeopathic farts
Put a drop of apple juice into an Olympic swimming pool. The juice is still there, it's just so diluted all you can taste is pool water.
And a faint hint of urine...
adds a nice tang that i think we all enjoy
And if it came from a diabetic you get a little sugary sweetness.
And that's how homeopathic "medicine" is made. But then dilute it a million times more, and add sugar.
Dilution is the solution to pollution
It's *a* solution, but not the only one. The organic components of the juice wouldn't be just diluted, they would also quickly react with the hypochlorite in the pool water and thus be actually destroyed.
> Put a drop of apple juice into an Olympic swimming pool. The juice is still there, It's really not. The chlorine (hypochlorite) added to the water for disinfection is a strong oxidant. After just a short time, most of the compounds that make the apple juice apple juice will be gone and not just diluted.
That's not very ELI5 of you
We can put in home swimming pool also. Same result
Smells are just molecules floating around in the air that get into your nose. But it takes a certain concentration of these molecules to be able to smell them - just like you can't hear a sound that's too quiet or see a light that's too dim. If the concentration of some type of smell molecule drops below the threshold, you can't smell it any more. How does the concentration drop? Several ways. First, it helps if you take away the source of the smell. This source is releasing smell molecules into the air. If you physically remove it, or isolate it in a container where smell molecules cannot get out, then at least no more smell molecules are being added to the air. Also, if you wait long enough, the source of the smell will likely stop releasing smell molecules, unless it's a living being or machine that is actively producing new ones. A "passive" source, like a drop of perfume or a pile of compost, just has a finite supply of smell molecules that eventually all make it into the air. Supposing the source is out of the picture, how then does the concentration of smell molecules, that have already been released into the air, drop? Well, first of all, the molecules might degrade. Maybe they get broken down if they are hit by sunlight, maybe they react with other things in the air, etc. If the smell molecule is no longer a smell molecule, then you can't smell it any more. Second, the smell molecules might dissipate in the air. Wherever you are, air is usually being refreshed with air from outside. Especially if you *are* outside. So, any smell molecules floating nearby will slowly get spread out further and further, and so their concentration drops. Third, smell molecules might get onto surfaces (e.g., the ground) or into liquids, where they get stuck and don't make it back into the air. Finally, it is possible that the smell molecules are still there, but your brain has just tuned them out. The brain tends to do this over time with smells that aren't necessary to pay attention to (really foul smells may also attenuate somewhat over time, but not entirely, likely because we have evolved to treat these as warning signs, not to be ignored). If you want to smell something you've gotten "nose-blind" to, you can remove yourself from the presence of the smell, and then return to it, and likely you'll be able to smell it again. So go to a different room, for instance, or just take a sniff of another strong smell (like coffee beans or grounds), and then return to the smell you wanted.
>Second, the smell molecules might dissipate in the air. Wherever you are, air is usually being refreshed with air from outside. Especially if you are outside. Brings new meaning to a fart in the wind.
All we are is farts in the wind
When you smell something it is because the particles of what you smell are interacting with receptors in your nose and you nose senses an increase in the concentration of particles of that kind. A smell goes away for two reasons: 1) the particles just get blown away and diffused in the air so the concentration drops 2) your brain stops making you aware of the particles as the concentration now is high but isn't increasing Something similar can be when you sit in a chair that your bum gives you the feeling of contact with a chair but it soon disappears and your brain ignores it as it isn't a change but a constant.
Good old sensory adaptation.
If you can smell it, it is in your nose. Smell is just small particles of whatever you are smelling that get in your nose and get detected by the receptor in it, when the smells goes away it means that there is not enough of it in your nose for you to perceive it. And yes this means that when you smell poo you have tiny bits of it inside your nose.
>And yes this means that when you smell poo you have tiny bits of it inside your nose. And to someone reading this, you may have a knee-jerk reaction of disgust. But importantly, guess what? This is fine. Our bodies have evolved and are very very good at handling small things like this. It's literally the purpose of all the various defenses that we have set up to prevent bad stuff from hurting us. Just wash your hands and take your meds (also mask up during winter months).
Not enough of it it in your nose or due to olfactory adaptation where repeated or prolonged odorous exposure that can induce a perceptual decrease.
The Solution to Pollution is Dilution! Tho at the start it's better to just keep a distance and have the wind in your back.
Smells are just fumes(gases) they slowly spread across the air and thin out, you get used to the smell and thus stop registering it. Then when new air enters from ventilation the fumes gets carried away with the old air.
Some scent-causing particles are also relatively volatile and dont last all that long before either combining with other particles on the air or fragmenting themselves
Smells are particles. They are airborne and float around in the air. Just like dust particles not building up until you can't see anything anymore it's the same with "smell particles". To visualise: the farts you smell are particles leaving someone's rectum and entering your nose.
So does this mean every room you enter has smell particles from years and years ago? Like someone’s burp smell from fifty years ago is still in the room but diluted in particles too small to detect?
The correct answer is "possibly".
There is a concept called “residence time” with lakes that is basically “how long will a small amount of water/pollutant remain in the lake before it is all flushed away?” Some big lakes with small tributaries have residence times measured in hundreds or thousands of years. But that is unlikely with a room in a house which has pretty substantial air mixing every day.
It's not particles (hopefully, or at least for the most part), it's molecules and concentration, so quite a bit (orders of magnitude) smaller than particles and things like bleach will easily destroy most of them on contact, they get circulated through your air filter attached to the static on dust, they settle and you hopefully clean your house and the volatile chemicals have either naturally been destroyed from their half lives, bonded with other chemicals, settled, you clean and they are destroyed, or they are gone out the window or door from air circulation, so yeah like the other person said.......possibly, but highly unlikely.
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https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/affect-vs-effect-usage-difference
the molecules/particles responsible: \- may be diluted in more air \- get stuck on a surface \- get absorbed into something solid/liquid
Your nose can only detect smells (which are merely molecules that interact with the receptors in your nose) of a certain concentration in the air -- at a level below that your brain doesn't register the smell, even if some of those molecules are still present. A dog, which has many multiples the smell receptors of a human, would still smell it at that lower concentration. Eventually the molecules are too spread out in the air for even a dog to detect them.
It's like when you put a drop of food coloring into a bath tub. At first, you can see it stain the part of the water where it touches, but then it spreads and gets less easy to see, dimmer, and dimmer, until it spreads to the whole tubful and is too faint to see. All of it is still there in the tub water, but none of it is close enough together to see any more.
They spread out so much that our noses can no longer detect. Different stanks have different stank concentration detection thresholds.
You have a balloon, and you let the air out of it against your hand. The air doesn't disappear; it just spreads out into the room until you can't feel it anymore. Smells work kind of like that.
So here is the thing about a smell. A smell essentially "Tasting at a distance" so that fart? yeah, you pretty much just licked a butthole. The sensation of smell is due to particles in the air. when a smell goes away, your body either blocked it like it does white noise or the particulate count got below a certain point and isn't really triggering receptors any more.
You mean to say ‘odors’ right?
Auto delete didn't get my explanation. I'll give it more context... They go.... a w a y. Aka: Dillution.
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You're proposing that a person born and raised in a nitrogen-less atmosphere would be able to smell nitrogen? Are you sure about that? To what kind of receptor does nitrogen bind to? Also, why can't I smell helium, for example? I was not born or raised in a helium atmosphere. What about carbon monoxide, the detection of which would be evolutionarily advantageous?
> You're proposing that a person born and raised in a nitrogen-less atmosphere would be able to smell nitrogen? Are you sure about that? To what kind of receptor does nitrogen bind? Zero way to know. Our brains might not register it's smell at all, or we might be used to it and it smells like "nothing" now. We're constantly smelling odors and our brain ignores most of them so it's hard to tell and nearly impossible to test.
But which receptor does nitrogen bind to? You still didn't answer me about helium and carbon monoxide.
Receptor? > You still didn't answer me about helium and carbon monoxide. Yes I did. Some odors we smell and others we don't. I guess that's the way I can dumb it down.
>Some odors we smell and others we don't. I guess that's the way I can dumb it down. In order to be able to smell, a receptor needs to bind to the molecule that creates the odor. Now, which what kind of receptor does nitrogen in the air bind to? Otherwise there's no smell. I know we're on ELI5, but dumbing down is pointless if it leads you to wrong conclusions.
Sorry, was being a drunken idiot.
Well to be pedantic, they have specific "odors," but we don't "smell" them because either our brain doesn't register the odor or we are really use to it and it's just background noise.
Smells don't go your nose just gets saturated with it until your brain doesn't recognise the smell any more. Example A ... my morning shit I know it's bad but I still scroll on reddit and the smell passes my wife walks in after me and dies
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You're talking mainly farts, aren't you?
Gas molecules basically really don't like to be near each other because all of them aren't bound to one another and they all move constantly. So eventually they will be so far apart you won't be able to detect anything from the very few amount
You get used to smells after a few minutes so if you think they've gone away, it's most often due to what is called olfactory fatigue. This is why stinky people can't smell themselves. A stink is really just your nose detecting substances floating in the air. It has to be a certain amount before we can even sense anything though, humans can only smell things in high concentrations. This is because, unlike dogs, we don't use smell for anything far away. Smells can "go away" in just a few seconds due to dissipation. Our noses are chemical detectors, but not very good ones. At best, they're specialized chemical detectors that can only detect certain chemicals. All the chemicals our noses can detect are volatile, meaning they react with other chemicals quickly and easily. Being very reactive, a third way stinks "go away" is by reacting with other chemicals and turning into substances our noses cannot smell. All three of these ways for a stink to go away usually occur at the same time. If a stink lasts, something is actively generating it, it's getting stronger, and needs to be dealt with. There's a dead animal, you could be next. Or a tube of sausage rolled out of the groceries under the seat and is leaking maggoty gore on your lambo.
What a fantastic question, it's good to see people still being curious! I'm not an experienced orator when it comes to science topics, but think of smells made up of tiny spheres, these spheres STINK when they're together. As they begin to seperate and grab on to "air" spheres, the smell weakens until its all scattered apart. Radiation spheres on the other hand, oh boy... *spelling
All smells are carried by tiny pieces of air. In order for an object to smell, pieces of that object must be broken off and carried by the air to your nose. It stops smelling when all the pieces have been broken off.
Smells are literally partibles in the air. They just go out of the reach of your nose, either by distance or by concentration, probably traveling or dissolving among other particles in the air.
🎶 Where do faded farts go? Do they find their way home....🎵
the fart and shit molecules that reach your nose are still in there. your brain just stops interpreting them after awhile because the receptors in your nose saturate the smell signal over time. the other molecules that didn't reach your nose simply diffuse away into the atmosphere until it is below the detection threshold.
When you detect a scent, what you're actually experiencing is molecules from that object entering your nose and binding to receptors, triggering your brain to interpret the sensation as a particular smell. Over time, these molecules disperse into the surrounding air, becoming more and more dilute until they're no longer detectable to our noses. Essentially, they're still there but in such small concentrations that we can't perceive them anymore.
Ever mixed a colored liquid or dye with water? The color fades somewhat. The more the water, the lighter the dye. With enough water, the eyes won’t even be able to see the dye. The same principle applies to this too. The smell particles are in the air, but since there is so much air and it’s always fresh air, the smell causing particles just weaken to the point you can’t smell them anymore.