• Question: If there's a speed of sound and a speed of light is there a speed of smell?

    Asked by mattsid to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 25 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I don’t know, but my nose had been running all day.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Boom boom. 🙂

      I guess that the speed a smell travels from one location to another depends on air movement between the source and your nose. If there’s a breeze, then the smell will appear to travel more quickly because the air its been spread out in will move more quickly than stationary air.
      There’s a phenomenon known as Brownian motion that describes how quickly one material will spread (or diffuse) into another that would describe the spread of a smell at the microscopic level.

    • Photo: Tianfu Yao

      Tianfu Yao answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I think the smell comes from the molecular movement. So if the moleculars travel with the air movement, than this is a speed on the air moving direction.

    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Speed of light and sound are constant in a vaccuum because they are waves. Smell wouldn’t travel at all in a vacuum because there’s no air to move it. So there isn’t a “speed of smell” in the same way.

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