The Emperor of Scent tells of the scientific maverick Luca Turin, a connoisseur and something of an aesthete who wrote a bestselling perfume guide and bandied about an outrageous new theory on the human sense of smell. Drawing on cutting-edge work in biology, chemistry, and physics, Turin used his obsession with perfume and his eerie gift for smell to turn the cloistered worlds of the smell business and science upside down, leading to a solution to the last great mystery of the senses: how the nose works.
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Chemistry, Anybody?
JJ(San Francisco)
In my searching for a few Perfume guides in the bookstore, I came across this new book–The Emperor of Scent, A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses, by Chandler Burr. It is a biographical narration of a British Scientist Luca Turin, who recently (1995) formulated a theory on how our noses work, how we human smell. Apparently it is molecular vibration of each scent molecule that our brain recognizes.
Chemistry was my worst subject when I was in school. It frustrated me because for every nicely written theory or theorem, there are at least ten exception cases associated with it. Unlike in Physics and Math, where one only needs to understand the theory and apply them and everything will be peachy, in Chemistry, it is all about memorization of those exception cases, the ones that actually follow the so-called theories are rarities and no teacher has ever tested them in exams.
But this book’s author, Chandler Burr, made biophysics (a combination of molecular biology, Chemistry and Quantum Physics) sounds so much fun. Those crazy hateful molecules made up of single, double, or triple bound among various atoms suddenly turned into lively and funny actors, each with its own distinct personality, hurriedly went on its merry way to find a friend that they can bind with and sing their little note in the chord of a perfume.
Look at this paragraph for example, where the author was trying to explain “electron tunneling” (Don’t worry, I myself had no idea what this term meant before I read on! So read on.).
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Electrons are extremely inquisitive creatures, and they want to go everywhere. So they zip along inside conductors until they come to a gap, and then they crowd the edge of this atomic cliff and impatiently try to find a way to jump across to the other side. And you can just insert a bridge into that tiny gap “a single molecule will do, just jam it in there” and the electrons will enthusiastically rush through that molecule (It’s called “tunneling” because they actually burrow through the thing like frenetic moles) and across to the other side.
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See? Electrons are curious creatures and they are adventures, how marvelous! Can you imagine having a teacher like this in your high school class? I would be hooked on science, no doubt!
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full review2005-12-07 14:35 | comment
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