What is smell?

[DucPete]

What exactly is your sense of smell and how does it work?

There are smell sensors in your nose that send a signal to your brain that you smell something and how that thing smells.

Something has to actually cause the sensor to react.  For instance when you smell a flower SOMETHING has to come in contact with the nerve that senses the scent.  This would help explain why certain people with severe nut allergies cant even be in the same room with nuts, or can't eat food prepared where nuts were also prepared.  Some bit of the substance you're smelling has traveled in the air and gone into your nose causing you to detect it through your sense of smell..    Right?

So here's the big one....   I went to the bathroom at work and someone was taking a major smelly shit.    Does this mean that what was in that persons ass floated INTO my nose causing me to smell it?     Little bits of someone else's ass matter were inside my nose?

Please help.

[Mother]

yep, you have doodoo in your sniffer

[T-byrd]

Go rent 'Ice Storm' if you haven't already seen it, this very thing is discussed at some point.  Great movie too. 

T

[Big Troubled Bear]

Yep

[DucPete]

Go rent 'Ice Storm' if you haven't already seen it, this very thing is discussed at some point.  Great movie too. 

T

Added to my Blockbuster list.   Thanks 

[jswledhed]

Volatile Organic Compounds, VOCs for short, my friend.  Just about anything organic produces VOCs in some form.  Some things produce them in higher quantities, others in lower quantities.  It is these molecules, plus a few inorganic compounds like hydrogen sulfide, that provide a scent.  How they interact with your nosey, I'm not sure.  I imagine its similar to the way your taste buds function.

So, no you didn't have someone's ass in your nose.  But, you did have many thousands of parts per million of CH4 and H2S, among other vile smelling compounds related to the dropper's diet that erupted from the aforementioned deuce the second it hit air, floating in your sinuses.

[BMR]

....and because we're all sophisticated, and own fine Italian machines, etc... Let's call it the olfactory sense..   

Oh, and btw...

YOU HAVE DOODIE IN YOUR NOSE!

sorry

[Rameses]

Why stop with your nose?

Think about it.

Did you inhale through your mouth at any point?

And it most likely made it all the way to your lungs.

[MendoDave]

And stuck to your tounge.

[ROBsS4R]

I wish I didn't read this.

I just went to the crapper and when the smell hit me I gagged.

Everything was okay once I masked the original smell with my smell though 

[Kaveh]

just think, if you're smelling it, it's everywhere else too, like your face, mouth, eyes, lips, inside your mouth...

[Mother]

Yep, we're all covered in doodoo

[Buckethead]

There's only one thing known to get fecal matter off of facial tissues.

Oleoresin capsicum.

Just spray it on and, voila, you're doody free.

[Mother]

we need a burning eyes smilie

[Buckethead]

we need a burning eyes smilie

Glad somebody got it.