What are you smelling when you smell something?

[Number Six]

If no distinctive smells are around and you sniff you smell nothing (or so it seems). You're smelling that atmosphere I guess, 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen and all that stuff.

Then a smell appears. Suppose someone brings a hot pizza into the room. You smell pizza. But what is it that you're actually smelling? Does a hot pizza give off microscopically small particles of itself and that is what is entering your nose and resulting in your sensation of pizza smell? Or something else? What substance in the air are you smelling that enables you to determine that a hot pizza is nearby?

 

[c4ts]

Does a hot pizza give off microscopically small particles of itself and that is what is entering your nose and resulting in your sensation of pizza smell?

Unless fourth grade science class has lied to me, I do believe it does. Though they're not actually pizza particles, they are bits of things like spices, tomato, yeast, grease, and cheeze released by cooking. Certain molecules in the air trigger different sensations in the olifactory gland or something like that.

 

[geni]

If no distinctive smells are around and you sniff you smell nothing (or so it seems). You're smelling that atmosphere I guess, 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen and all that stuff.

Then a smell appears. Suppose someone brings a hot pizza into the room. You smell pizza. But what is it that you're actually smelling? Does a hot pizza give off microscopically small particles of itself and that is what is entering your nose and resulting in your sensation of pizza smell? Or something else? What substance in the air are you smelling that enables you to determine that a hot pizza is nearby?

The particles you smell are well beyond the power of any optical microscope.

 

[Cecil]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfaction

 

[Iamme]

Things...substances "break down". This process gives up gas ot the elements involved. You smell the gas from the substance.

You don't smell a glass very well, or a stainless steel sink, or gold or a diamond very well, becuase these have a very slow decay rate.

Tomatoes..bananas...on the other hand..........

Oh...and then there are chemical combinations that give off gases also.