What is smell? Detailed answer

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What is smell? Detailed answer

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What is smell?

Everyone loves pleasant smells - the scent of flowers or the smell of a freshly baked cake. But there are also very unpleasant odors. Oddly enough, but the amount of a pleasant or unpleasant smell, in order to recognize it, can be very, very small!

Do you know that we can detect the smell of a certain substance if only 1/30 of it is present in a given volume of air? And this is characteristic of the average man, whose sense of smell is incomparably worse than that of dogs! How do we perceive smell?

We recognize an odor when a chemical comes into contact with certain nerve endings. These substances can be gaseous or solid. This is why we can smell things from a distance. The olfactory receptor nerve cells are located on the hairs that cover the nasal mucosa. These nerve endings cover a small space at the top of the nasal cavity. They are arranged in such a way that the air drawn in during breathing passes through them. But if we specifically want to smell something, such as flowers, then we inhale the air through our nose. When a substance enters the olfactory zone, the first impulse occurs, which is transmitted to the brain, where the odor is assessed.

There are 5 types of smells that we can recognize: floral (roses, violets, etc.); specific (lemon, apples, etc.); burnt (coffee, etc.); rotten (rotten eggs, cheese, etc.) and ethereal (gasoline, alcohol, etc.). We often confuse smell and taste because the gaseous particles of the food we eat irritate the olfactory receptors.

For example, if we drink coffee and do not smell it, then we will not feel its usual taste. This is why food seems tasteless when it is cold. Your sense of smell is blocked due to the cold, and this creates the effect of a lack of taste.

Author: Likum A.

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