Sick Of Sickness
New Member
Pretend you are a scientist that has received a research grant, with "just enough" (lets not say unlimited, but rather, the amount needed) to do a scientific experiment or project...what would it be? What do you wish you could research that (as far as you know) hasn't been done yet?
Be reasonable though...something plausible?
For me, well...very little is known about smell. Scent is the least understood of all the senses. We aren't even sure how it works exactly. We do not know what the odorant molecule does that tells the nose what we are smelling. There are a ton of theories, but one of them is stirring up alot of controversy: the theory is that its the molecular vibration.
We know that no two molecules vibrate the same way, and the theory is that within the smellable spectrum, each molecule corresponds to a particular vibration. So if we know the vibration, we know the smell. If we know what smell we want, we can engineer a molecule to vibrate at that frequency, which would give us that smell. The advantage to this is that the flavor & fragrance industry is a multi-billion dollar a year enterprise, and most companies waste thousands of manhours and billions of dollars on R&D, developing the flavors and fragrances you experience in your soaps, detergents, perfumes, soda, candy, etc....but most of this is guesswork and just blind experimentation, especially when a new flavor is being engineered.
NOW, Terry Acree has done research in this field for decades and found that the same odorants appear over and over and over again...in dead rat, fresh flowers, burnt toast, etc....in all the smell experiences you can possibly think of, the same molecules appear over and over and over again....essentially, these are the smell elements. These molecules, he theorizes are the base for all smells in the world...that are within the human smellable spectrum. (Because what a dog smells that we cant is at a different vibrational frequency)
So far, there have been only 738 discovered. Info at http://www.flavornet.org
And there is no defined smell spectrum.
I would like to obtain all these molecules, and through rigorous testing with thousands of patients of all ages, races, backgrounds and cultures, have them identify the smells presented to them in such a way as to see if a spectrum exists in the way the electromagnetic spectrum does.
In other words, do all these smells transition into one another as their vibration increases. Do all the sweet smells exist on one end, for example at a vibrational range, and all the pugent smells exist at the other end with a higher vibrational range?...Basically, is the vibration-smell correlation random and scattered, or does it follow a distinct and predictable pattern?
Im not a scientist, so I dont know if any of this made sense. All the info above is from what I have read on my own..
your turn!
Be reasonable though...something plausible?
For me, well...very little is known about smell. Scent is the least understood of all the senses. We aren't even sure how it works exactly. We do not know what the odorant molecule does that tells the nose what we are smelling. There are a ton of theories, but one of them is stirring up alot of controversy: the theory is that its the molecular vibration.
We know that no two molecules vibrate the same way, and the theory is that within the smellable spectrum, each molecule corresponds to a particular vibration. So if we know the vibration, we know the smell. If we know what smell we want, we can engineer a molecule to vibrate at that frequency, which would give us that smell. The advantage to this is that the flavor & fragrance industry is a multi-billion dollar a year enterprise, and most companies waste thousands of manhours and billions of dollars on R&D, developing the flavors and fragrances you experience in your soaps, detergents, perfumes, soda, candy, etc....but most of this is guesswork and just blind experimentation, especially when a new flavor is being engineered.
NOW, Terry Acree has done research in this field for decades and found that the same odorants appear over and over and over again...in dead rat, fresh flowers, burnt toast, etc....in all the smell experiences you can possibly think of, the same molecules appear over and over and over again....essentially, these are the smell elements. These molecules, he theorizes are the base for all smells in the world...that are within the human smellable spectrum. (Because what a dog smells that we cant is at a different vibrational frequency)
So far, there have been only 738 discovered. Info at http://www.flavornet.org
And there is no defined smell spectrum.
I would like to obtain all these molecules, and through rigorous testing with thousands of patients of all ages, races, backgrounds and cultures, have them identify the smells presented to them in such a way as to see if a spectrum exists in the way the electromagnetic spectrum does.
In other words, do all these smells transition into one another as their vibration increases. Do all the sweet smells exist on one end, for example at a vibrational range, and all the pugent smells exist at the other end with a higher vibrational range?...Basically, is the vibration-smell correlation random and scattered, or does it follow a distinct and predictable pattern?
Im not a scientist, so I dont know if any of this made sense. All the info above is from what I have read on my own..
your turn!