Smell science

[u/TTUgirl]

Has anyone ever done a fun activity involving smell for a lab or stations? I teach high school chemistry and we were thinking about ways we could incorporate smell into our intermolecular forces units that would be fun for our students.

[u/tchrhoo]

When I taught a physical science class I did an activity where I stood in one corner of the room and placed students all over the place. I then sprayed a burst of Lysol and had them start a stopwatch that they would stop when they smelled the Lysol. It was a great way to discuss motion and data.

[u/knightnshiningbeskar]

Many years ago when I was in high school chemistry, we made aromatic compounds that smelled like fake fruit. I wish I remembered how!

[u/soapyshinobi → u/knightnshiningbeskar]

Ester lab. There are lots of resources online. Some of it is slightly advanced chemistry more appropriate for AP. The classic lab is making spearmint, banana smell, etc.

[u/exkingzog → u/knightnshiningbeskar]

Sounds like esterification. Though to work well this needs refluxing and sulfuric acid.

[u/waineofark]

I'm not a chemistry teacher, but here are some ideas from my middle school physical science class that you could maybe incorporate:

-learn about how salmon use smell to swim upstream to lay eggs. I've created a memory/matching game by filling clear mason jars with water and an essential oil/clear scent (2 of every scent, maybe 5 different scents)

-make soap (chemical change with lye) or lip balm (physical change with melting) and add scents

[u/jffdougan]

the Living By Chemistry textbook/program uses smells to drive its unit on molecular structure, with more of an emphasis on organic chemistry than most traditional books.

[u/TTUgirl → u/jffdougan]

We’re about to adopt this textbook because of topics like this

[u/jffdougan → u/TTUgirl]

It's got highlights and lowlights. For me, the biggest lowlight is that there isn't much that exists as a way to expand things out for kids who need any kind of additional practice/reinforcement. It also took me about 2x as long to get through a lesson as the authors anticipated. It is, however, still my favorite of many HS textbooks I looked and and reviewed for a general-level chemistry class. The ACS once had a book targeted at honors-level kinds of programs that I thought was good, but really challenging, and that I liked, too.

[u/TTUgirl → u/jffdougan]

Good to know. We don’t use our textbooks much because we have a pretty thorough collection of resources for most our units. But it brought in the most interesting real life examples and illustrations than most the others we looked at.

[u/jffdougan → u/TTUgirl]

Absolutely! and its "intro to the periodic table" activity is the best I've come across, though it requires a bit of a commitment to not have them hanging displayed in the room until you get that far.

[u/UlissesNeverMisses]

Ethyl salicilate synthesis produces a ton of smell, and it's easily recognizable as menthol

[u/Pantelonia]

Make sure you have a way to be inclusive if any of your students don't have a sense of smell. I have anosmia (due to sinus issues) as a chem teacher and I would have felt left out as a student doing a lab that's entirely about smell.

[u/Winter-Profile-9855]

Living by Chemistry one is great but not a huge focus on IMF, but it is there. To go farther I like them to find things that smell (paint, coins, dirt) and try and figure out what is smelling since solids shouldn't have a smell.

[u/Gullible-Musician214]

I’ve done a lesson like this addressing molecular spacing and thermodynamics - prep balloons by adding a few drops of essential oil inside, then blow them up.

Students smell the outside of the balloons and identify the different scents, then move to a discussion of why they can smell the scents from the outside when you put the oil on the inside.

[u/BothBoysenberry6673]

HASPI.org has a really good smell lab!

[u/rigney68]

We did the IQWST lesson. 8 Jars of scents on cotton balls. At each station is also a card with a picture of the molecule with color coded atoms. You go to a station.

Step 1 smell coffee beans to reset sniffer. Step 2 try to guess the smell Step 3 look at the note card picture Step 4 count the number of each atom to create a chemical formula for each smell.

We had a bunch of similar ones, so they could see that just one hydrogen atom of difference can create a whole new smell!

[u/rhodium_rose]

Would have to be group work. It’s amazing how many people can’t smell all the things around them.

[u/Playful-Paramedic188]

Hi! This may be a little of course, but I also teach high school chemistry and this year I bought a drill for essential oils (I did with a Chem 2 class which only has 12 kids). We just made our first successful batch- and I was surprised how much the kids really got into it. I bought on amazon for about $250

[u/Vivid_Needleworker_8]

I do a distillation of chery coke. The distillate is the cherry flavor, a clear liquid!

[u/wyldtea]

2150 odor is a standard methods test for odor if you wanted to teach you students some EPA tests.

link

[u/exkingzog]

The alcohols get more ‘chemical’ smelling and less miscible with water as you go down the homologous series.

[u/VegetablesAndHope]

OpenSciEd has a smell lab near the end of seventh grade unit one. I haven't done it yet, but hear good things about it. From my understanding kids smell different compounds and categorize molecular models to identify what parts of different molecules contribute to what scent. You would have to adapt it for high school.

As others have said, Living by Chemistry has some good stuff.

[u/Choice_Ad9032]

I haven’t done it but a local museum had an activity to make “ancient” perfume ( Egyptian, Roman etc). Could talk about why smells work well don’t together. I had planned on eventually adapting this for a chemistry lesson plan.

[u/Damn-Good-Texan]

Putting perfume in one ballon but not the other and making them guess