Everybody and everything stinks to somebody sometimes

Three of our sniffers, blindfolded, trying to identify the materials in the containers using only their sense of smell.

Last week, we asked our students to don blindfolds (sleeping masks in this case) and use their honkers (i.e. noses) to sniff the contents of a series of containers and then to try to tell us what was in each of them.

A book that we’ve been reading with some of our students recently, Stink and the World’s Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers (third in a series of books from the author of the Judy Moody tales and featuring Judy’s brother), starts off with a trip to a science museum that’s putting on an exhibition featuring a sort of smell acuity test. Museum visitors are invited to sniff an array of body odors and then try to figure out which one, is for instance, armpit odor … or rank sneaker-and-socks aroma.

Our six odor sources: flowers, freshly cut shallots, chocolate chip cookies, salmon, cheese, and jackfruit.

As a surprise, we decided to run a similar, though more hygienic, smell test in class. In place of body odors, we used flowers, freshly cut shallots, chocolate chip cookies, salmon, cheese, and jackfruit (visible in the photo above). There was no cheating but nearly all of the guesses that our students made were correct! Other surprises included the fact that a few students actually enjoyed the aroma of raw shallots!

Cover image for 'Stink and the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers'.