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Author: Subject: Best and worst smelling chemicals?
sbbspartan
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[*] posted on 22-12-2012 at 16:56


I just got some ethyl acetate from home depot as MEK substitute. I actually sort of like it's smell, its sort of fruity. I also like GAA quite a lot. I just love the smell of vinegar, even when it's pretty concentrated. Methyl salicylate isn't bad either. I really hate HCl and ammonia though, as well as nitrogen dioxide. I can't stand it, no matter how concentrated.



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DraconicAcid
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[*] posted on 4-2-2013 at 13:54


I haven't had an opportunity to smell anything terribly vile in the past few years. But I vaguely recall being horrified by the smells of trimethylphosphine, phenyl isothiocyanate, carbon disulphide, and pyridine. The worst, however, was an osmium compound that a coworker made as the starting material for his research project. There's a reason it's named "osmium". It didn't help that Clumsy Clark would get it on every bit of equipment that he would use in the preparation (the glassware, the clamps, the hoses, the hot plate, the pen he wrote his observations down on, the doorknob he'd use to exit the lab without bothering to take off his gloves...), so any time you'd pick up anything in the lab for the next week, your hands would reek of this stuff. I disliked this person more than the guy who tried weighing out phenyl isothiocyanate in the middle of the room (and stared blankly at me when I told him to get it into the fume hood NOW!).

I can't think of a best smell. Vanillin is nice, but once you've supervised three weeks of organic labs that involve the material (first week, separation from a mixture, second week, reduction to vanillic acid, third week...I forget what), you lose your appreciation for it.
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DraconicAcid
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[*] posted on 5-2-2013 at 09:47


Hot benzoic acid is nasty. I had a student who (when recrystallizing it from hot water) took a sniff, and said, "EWW!!! This smells like crack!"

Her lab partner looked blankly at her, and replied, "I thought crack smelled *good*. Doesn't it have poppies in it?"
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[*] posted on 5-2-2013 at 13:34


Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid  
Hot benzoic acid is nasty. I had a student who (when recrystallizing it from hot water) took a sniff, and said, "EWW!!! This smells like crack!"

Her lab partner looked blankly at her, and replied, "I thought crack smelled *good*. Doesn't it have poppies in it?"


I remember heating benzoic acid in a test tube with calcium acetate. It was quite nasty experience.
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[*] posted on 6-2-2013 at 10:33


Really? Well cocaine does have a benzoyl ester so its quite possible.

My ethyl benzoate smelled much better after removing the unreacted benzoic acid, but I didn't notice anything too bad

Also note cocaine can hydrolyze into methyl benzoate, which drug sniffing dogs are trained to detect (wikipedia). I better not touch any of my science stuff before going to an airport, the ethyl benzoate bottle still smells slightly minty on the outside!




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KonkreteRocketry
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[*] posted on 20-2-2013 at 06:05


NO2 worst
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[*] posted on 20-2-2013 at 06:35


Not really a chemical per se... But the thick syrupy beef extract for microbiology smells horrid
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[*] posted on 20-2-2013 at 19:22


From my home lab experience glacial acetic acid will knock you down. Vanillin as some have mentioned is great. Benzyl Chloride will make your eyes water something awful as well.

While I know it is bad for me, I have always enjoyed the smell of chloroform, diethyl ether, and other organic solvents. No, I do not inhale them, but their smells aren't disagreeable.




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[*] posted on 26-2-2013 at 08:13


i like the smell of diethyl ether. (but it's a slow working anaesthetic. be careful) and also toluene.
The worst smells i have experienced are probably bromine, ammonia and sulfur dioxide. Also, BENZYL BROMIDE is one of the most evil compounds that i have experienced. It caused really painful coughing, chest pain and sneezing. i had to leave room. it brought continuous tears from my eyes. tears didn't stop even after i left the place and washed my eyes with a plenty of water. i felt problems in breathing continuously for 1-2 days. :o
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[*] posted on 26-2-2013 at 10:06


I have a date palm tree that is flowering now and the scent is kind of like vanillin. Each inflorescence is about 60 cm long and will make a shower of white pollen if you shake it. I wonder if you could discover some new use for the pollen?

Tidbits
"The perfect palm perfume, he argued, ought to smell of its pollen."
http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/scent-of-a-date-palm...

"The sale of these male flowers is quite a ritual in the market. It usually entails much questioning and discussion, and the spathe is examined minutely. Often a strip of the covering has been peeled back to expose the spikelets. The spathe is then bound with a piece of date palm frond to prevent it opening further, as it would otherwise quickly deploy into a open brush of spikelets."
http://enhg.4t.com/articles/spathe/spathe.htm

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/and.12025/abstrac...
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[*] posted on 27-4-2013 at 16:03


pyridine.... yuck!
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[*] posted on 27-4-2013 at 18:30


Am I the only one who enjoys the smell of iodine?
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[*] posted on 28-4-2013 at 16:05


What causes the scents and tastes of cacoa? Its rather bitter, but has some scented chemicals? Any ideas?
With a google I found flavoids....hrrrmmmm




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[*] posted on 29-4-2013 at 02:09


Oh and yes, tdep, Iodine can smell rather nice... In very low concentration.



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[*] posted on 29-4-2013 at 08:08


Chlorinated xylenes smell really bad, like a combination of chlorine and a sharp, vomit-inducing smell that I can't describe. The smell lingers for days on any surfaces that it touched. After chlorinating a little less than 10 ml of xylene, my fingers had that smell for 2 days. Not even a long wash with soap gets rid of the smell.

Small amounts of SO2, from burning sulfur, smell very nice though, like matches. If I inhaled a bit too much, after the initial irritation the pleasant smell would stay in my nose for about half an hour. Oddly, SO2 generated by other means, such as treating sodium thiosulfate with an acid, did not have that nice smell, instead just stinging the nose (like HCl vapours).
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[*] posted on 29-4-2013 at 08:19


I love the smell of chlorine in low concentrations, acetone, diethyl ether, chloroform, toluene, vanillin, and most alkyl nitrites. I don't mind getting a small whiff of hydrogen sulfide or ethyl mercaptan they just smell so bad I laugh a little. :D

I absolutely hate iodine in any concentration, chlorine in high concentration, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, nitrogen dioxide, methyl ethyl ketone, methanol, ethanol, and acetic acid, commercial acetylene. :mad:





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[*] posted on 11-5-2013 at 01:08


The other day I had the rater dubious pleasure of smelling a jar of butanoic acid. I can only describe it as being "essence of vomit"



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[*] posted on 11-5-2013 at 12:17


Naphthalene, ethyl acetate, iodine. Love 'em. I just got a bunch of mothballs and my lab now smells faintly of them; it brings back heavy memories of the laboratory I had in the garage as a teenager. The other two remind me of the stockroom at the university where my dad worked.

My day job puts me in occasional contact with boutique amines *barfs everywhere* I wouldn't ordinarily like the smell of paraformaldehyde, p-dichlorobenzene, and phenol, the mix we use for odor control, but they're much better than cadaverine and putrescine.
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[*] posted on 23-5-2013 at 02:45


I LOVE VANILLA!



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[*] posted on 2-8-2013 at 08:14


The smell of potassium o-ethyldithiocarbonate is positively horrific, to me anyways. I'm trying to scrape it out of the reaction flask to wash and dry and it is ridiculously disgusting. It's like being surrounded by Taco Bell fart or something, gag-inducing :( hopefully it won't smell as terrible once washed and dried?
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[*] posted on 15-8-2013 at 08:28


Quote: Originally posted by markgollum  
I like the smell of the di- and mono- nitro toluenes:D(smell a bit like almonds, sort of).


HCN also smells like almonds :D




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[*] posted on 15-8-2013 at 08:33


Quote: Originally posted by Cyrus  
I love the smell of HCl, it is very invigorating ;)


Eew, i took one sniff of HCl, and I gagged. It was a reflex.




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[*] posted on 15-8-2013 at 08:46


I rarely have complaint with chemical smells, but I've found that 1,4-dichlorobenzene is particularly disagreeable. It's sickeningly sweet. High concentrations are unbearable.



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[*] posted on 18-8-2013 at 07:50


I just made some Bromoform today. I love the smell. I don't take big sniffs. I smell from about 3 feet away. There is barely any smell, but what I do smell, I like.
PS. I have not felt any weird effects.




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[*] posted on 18-8-2013 at 08:19


Cancer takes a while to set in. :P
Be safe.




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