Sep 22, 2005
What Do Boron and Carbon Smell Like
Quite a lot of visitors to Sciencebase hit the site asking questions of the search engines, but a recent spate of similar questions would suggest lots of students doing a science assignment: What does boron smell like? What does carbon smell like? What is molecules plasma? (sic) Picture of zinc element etc etc.
As the question about boron seems to come up the most frequently and has garnered the most comments on this post, I thought I would get a definitive answer from boron expert John Kennedy Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds, UK. This is what he has to say and it pretty much confirms my own suspicions about boron, although I am still curious as to why this question comes up so often and wonder whether there are volatile compounds formed when boron comes into contact with your skin in the same way that metallic BO arises.
“Elemental boron is a ceramic, and completely involatile,” Kennedy told me, “So it should have no smell associated with it, just like porcelain.” He points out that very fine boron dust might stimulate the nostrils in the same way that any dust would and could feasibly have a particular nuance of flavour. “As I recall when I did handle some course boron powder,” adds Kennedy, “there was no smell, just like sand.”
So there you have it, volatility is the key. If something is involatile, then it cannot reach the smell (olfactory) receptors in your nose to stimulate them. If it is finely powdered, particles could conceivably reach your nose, but would stimulate it in a similar way to any other fine dust. Some time ago, we discussed on Sciencebase.com an odd theory that the nose acts as a sophisticated natural spectrometer rather than a straightforward detector. This theory suggests that different compounds smell differently because they vibrate with different frequencies, a property observed by vibrational spectroscopy.
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monique said,
March 7, 2006 at 10:29 pm
What does boron and zinc smell like?!?!?!
You should also have it listed on your site if anyone else asked the question because chances are others would like to know!!!
Thank you
-monique
sciencebase said,
March 8, 2006 at 7:54 am
Okay, I’m curious, why do all these sciencebase visitors need to know what boron and zinc smell like? Why the elements B and Zn, specifically? I could imagine that there might be a query on any of all the elements, but it is boron and zinc that crop up again and again.
Anyway, if any reader has a sample of zinc or boron to hand, could they (under adult, expert supervision) provide us with an answer. It’s a long time since I worked in a chem lab and I really don’t recall boron or zinc having any noticeable odour.
Boron
Zinc
M Pintero said,
January 17, 2007 at 2:40 am
What science project cares about how these molecules smell?
Ted said,
January 17, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Personally, I’d give a student extra points if they turned out with a decent project on chemsitry that mentioned the smells of the diffrent chemicals
weezy said,
March 13, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Why don’t you guys just answer the question, what does carbon smell like?
David Bradley said,
March 14, 2007 at 8:51 am
Weezy, that would be too easy wouldn’t it? As far as I know boron, carbon, zinc have no discernible odor. Some elements do have an odor and others produce an odor only when you touch them which is odd, but down to their reaction with fatty acids on other biomolecules on the surface of your skin.
Angela said,
April 25, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Ummm for your information sciencebased guy–i need to know the smell of these elements because i have to do a project on boron and one of the questions is the odor–so we do have reasons for asking these questions…..
David Bradley said,
April 25, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Well Angela, didn’t I already say that? When you’ve got hold of a sample (under lab supervision of course) report back here and tell me what those elements smell like. In the meantime, you may be interested in a rather odd reason why aluminum smells rancid and it is probably not what you expect. read the article here
Angela said,
April 26, 2007 at 9:46 pm
David–i wasnt posting the comment to u–it was to science based guy–and im only doing one element which is boron-i’m not interested in any other elements but i found some information and it doesn’t have a smell according to wikipedia.com or siifi.com–we don’t get the chance to go back in our lab and do that because it would take too long since we all have different elements
David Bradley said,
April 26, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Who is “science based guy”? This is my site, sciencebase.com..so I guess I must be science based guy
Allison said,
May 14, 2007 at 4:13 am
i need to know what Boron smells like also because for a project you have to know the odor. sooo ya?
JohnK said,
May 15, 2007 at 8:45 am
Boron has no smell because it is a nonvolatile ceramic.
JohnK said,
May 15, 2007 at 10:32 am
I found some boron in the lab. Experiment duly performed. Our sample is a fine powder, in appearance rather like carbon black, but dark grey/brown, rather than black. Completely odourless when you sniff the jar. On rubbing between the fingers, then there is a VERY FAINT smell close to the ‘metallic’ smell that I associate with rubbing aluminium cooking pans to get them really clean and shiny - but I emphasise that this is very faint.
John K
Tracy said,
May 19, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I need to know what Zinc smells like for a project. Also can anyone give me a good description of its appearance?
Thanks so much, everyone!
David Bradley said,
May 21, 2007 at 11:42 am
Here’s the WebElements entry for zinc. It mentions no smell. Likewise, the chemistry section in Wikipedia does not mention zinc as having a smell.
I have not handled zinc powder, but do not recall any odour from galvanized (zinc plated) nails last time I used them. I suspect any smell from zinc would arise from the interaction of the metal with natural skin secretions as occurs when handling aluminium.
Any chemists with access to zinc powder care to elaborate?
Claudia said,
December 17, 2007 at 1:46 am
Hey i need to know what carbon smells like 4 a project anybody know?oh and also the taste,is it malleable and ductile??? Please help me guys!??????
David Bradley said,
December 17, 2007 at 8:44 am
Claudia, you should be able to find most of those facts by checking out any of the many periodic tables on the web, including http://www.webelements.com, which will tell you what kind of element carbon is. Malleable, ductile? You should be able to find out quite quickly whether carbon is one of the kind of materials that have those properties.