How do we smell? - Rose Eveleth
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33,823 Questions Answered
Let’s Begin…
An adult human can distinguish up to 10,000
odors. You use your nose to figure out what to eat, what to buy and even when it’s
time to take a shower. But how do the molecules in the air get translated into smells in
your brain? Rose Eveleth charts the smelly journey through your olfactory epithelium and explains why scent can be so subjective.
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Meet The Creators
- Educator Rose Eveleth
- Director Igor Coric
- Narrator Rose Eveleth

by TED-Ed
Can you come up with ideas for how to make the human nose more powerful? Using what you know about how smell works, what would you do to increase our sense of smell?
Comments are closed on this discussion.
Thach Nguyen Quoc
Lesson completed
Making our oldfactory epithelium bigger or for instance, maybe, we find out which neuron make we can smell odor A, B, C,...from that knowledge we can create something that can control the odors we want to smell more clear or something can absord odor for our nose.
Tristanie Albert
Lesson completed
I would put more olfactory epithelium inside our noses.
Keyontay Robinson
Lesson completed
make cells stronger
Keyontay Robinson
Lesson completed
make food smell stronger
Garrett Palmer
Lesson in progress
in response to Sean Hill Show comment
i agree to this fact
Horeyah Ali
Lesson completed
People should cover their nose while sneazing because that what gives u germs
holabird science
holabird science
Lesson completed
Nothing
adrianna shewbridge
Lesson completed
Maybe if you don’t smell bad smells yiurvsmese if smell would be good
hailey guerin
Lesson completed
You could create some type of mask to train the nose to be more stronger. It would put strong senses that would go through your nose to make it stronger.
Angelina Anderson
Lesson completed
I would inject more into the olfactory epthilum and make the nose more powerful.