Is it possible to smell heat

Next time you pull a meal out of the refrigerator or freezer, take a whiff. How strong is the scent? Now heat up your food and smell again. Is the scent stronger than before? This change in smell is because as you heated up your leftovers, those odor molecules began to speed up. The other factor is our nose, of course. Dalton explains to Discovery News that as a protective response against cold, dry air, the olfactory receptors that lie inside all of our noses bury down in the winter.

So the lack of smells plus the lesser ability to smell makes winter have a different odor than summer. The psychological reason a cold day smells different than a hot one is that we have come expect it to smell a certain way. Looking for more Never Stop Asking "Why?

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Today's Hours : 10 am—5 pm. Indoor: 10 am—5 pm Outdoor: Closed for the season. Access Pass. All Exhibits. Indoor Exhibits Year-Round. Outdoor Sports Experiences March-Nov. Future Exhibits. Live Theater Shows. Press Room. SSP Lifer. Oct 11, 17, 0 0. Like a hot soldering gun Probably just a chemical im inhaling but what eva. Ika Lifer. Mar 22, 14, 3 I don't think so. I think it's a combination of the smell of whatever is hot and the "temperature sensors" in your nostrils.

Like when you smell a hot new soldering iron I know, I know Dec 7, 3, 1 0. I think maybe the heat makes the nostrils warmer and I perceive that as a smell; or maybe I just associate the smell of things when warm as warmth itself SmoochyTX Lifer.

Apr 19, 13, 0 0. You mean like when you turn the heat on after it's been off for a long time? Then yes. Otherwise, something is either cooking, melting, or burning.

Then yes to that too. Or do you mean when you see a hot guy and he walks by with just that amount of cologne and a delicious back end? Mar 8, 3, 0 0. I can feel it.. The smell is probably something nearly burning. Mar 5, 49, www. You don't smell "heat", but when objects are hot, more molecules tend to move into the air. Oct 15, 8, 0 I can certainly smell "the heat" when my dad comes back from a run on a hot day Jan 22, 5, 3 I sort of know what you are talking about.

A perfect example is a car heater, there isn't a very distinct smell about it other than hot. Jan 28, 15, 3, Most people can also hear color, taste time and feel space. Insights from trigeminal perception indicate they could be shaped by human physiology. On the other hand, our previous cross-cultural work de Valk et al. However, since this is a largely unexplored area where no previous cross-cultural study has been undertaken, we do not favor a particular hypothesis, and consider a broad range of possibilities.

In order to see whether culture-specific factors could mediate the associations, we follow the procedure in de Valk et al. There are specific beliefs that we explore: 1 a belief embedded in the indigenous knowledge system of the Maniq linking smell terms and temperature, and 2 beliefs embedded in popular medical theory among the Thai linking odor objects and temperature.

The Maniq are a small nomadic community of rainforest hunter-gatherers living in southern Thailand. They speak a language with a rich vocabulary of abstract smell terms and have intricate cultural beliefs relating to odors Wnuk and Majid, Abstract smell terms are words dedicated to smells that describe odor quality instead of referring to specific sources.

This contrasts with links via objects. These kinds of links are likely to be found in cultures which explicitly associate objects with specific temperatures, such as in Thai culture. According to some traditional beliefs in Thailand, many foods and herbs can be classified into hot and cold categories Van Esterik, ; Salguero, These beliefs derive from the humoral theory of medicine, popularized by Hippocrates and Galen, and found in many cultures throughout the world Foster, ; Messer, ; Anderson, For example, in Thailand garlic and most meats are considered hot, while jasmine tea and lotus root are cool Salguero, , p.

If such beliefs are used as basis of odor-temperature associations, we would expect objects to play a mediating role for associations, e. Yet another possibility is that odor-temperature associations are not dependent on cultural beliefs, but are universal, perhaps due to shared physiology. Laska found that menthol peppermint and cineole eucalyptus were consistently matched with a temperature term cool. This is due to the trigeminal stimulation evoked by these odors.

This hypothesis would predict similar results for all people, irrespective of whether people have beliefs about odor-temperature correspondences. If odors are invariably tied to a cool or hot feeling, everyone should have the same odor-temperature associations. Our study therefore included Dutch participants, who do not have an explicit humoral-based theory about food and temperature, and for whom no a priori beliefs about odor-temperature associations have been reported. The sample size of the Thai and Dutch was based on earlier studies on cross-modal correspondences which test 20—30 participants e.

There were fewer Maniq participants because of practical difficulties of accessing large numbers of people in this remote community. All participants provided informed consent and were given monetary compensation, or equivalent, for participation. Odor stimuli were real objects commonly ingested in the Netherlands mustard, licorice, red wine, peanut butter, and cheese , Thailand dried durian, shrimp paste, coconut milk, galangal, and fermented petai beans , or in both countries banana, tobacco, cooked rice, garlic, and canned fish.

In addition, we included items that were considered hot or cold foods by Thai speakers. Some of these beliefs are fairly common. For instance, durian is widely known to be hot and banana cold, but there is also some variation in associations and level of expertise on the subject Van Esterik, ; Salguero, ; Kumar et al.

We presented real objects as stimuli. While real objects ensure greater ecological validity, there is less control over their perceptual characteristics. For each stimulus, we used a prescribed amount that was kept comparable across testing, e.

We monitored the stimuli for freshness by checking all smells on average every 3 h and replacing the items which did not appear fresh with new ones. All objects were presented in opaque squeezy bottles so participants could not see what they were. Temperature stimuli were two non-transparent white plastic cups with covers that were filled with either warm boiled or cold iced water. We used the same generic unbranded cups for hot and cold. They were ml cups with a handle made of hard non-disposable plastic to prevent them from deforming under the pressure of heat.

There was always a marked relative difference between the warm and cold cup throughout the experiment, although unavoidably the temperature in the cups changed slightly over the course of the experiment due to the practicalities of data collection in the field. In order to maintain this difference for all participants, freshly boiled water was added to the warm cup and ice was added to the cold cup in the breaks between participants.

Participants first completed an odor-to-temperature matching task, in which they sniffed an odor and matched it to either warm or cold temperature by touching one of the two cups. No such problems were reported. The odor bottles were handled by the experimenter. The break between odors was the time needed to record the answer and exchange stimuli minimum 25 s.

Participants completed the odor-to-temperature matching task twice, with an average break of 2 h range 1—4 h in between. Odor stimuli were presented to all participants in a single fixed random order. The order was fixed within a task but differed across tasks. The naming-plus-rating task always followed the matching tasks, so as not to influence the associations. All responses were noted down in an answer sheet and audio-recorded for later transcription. We first tested whether participants were consistent in how they associated odors to temperatures across trials.

Each participant completed the odor temperature task twice. We considered a response to be consistent if the same temperature was chosen across both sessions. One Maniq participant completed the odor temperature task only once and was therefore excluded from analyses where data from both blocks was needed.

To test whether the associations were robust over time, i. Regardless of whether the temperature choice was consistent over time, we can ask which specific temperature was associated to each odor. Different temperatures may be chosen across sessions, therefore we examined block 1 and 2 separately.

We applied a Bonferroni correction for the 15 odors we tested leading to a chance level of 0. There were few specific odor-temperature associations that were statistically significant according to this strict criterion. Finally, in the Maniq group none of the odors was significantly related to hot or cold.

Temperature choices for odor, session, and language. Y -axis represents the frequency of hot red or cold blue choices. Binomial tests were conducted to test whether odors were significantly related to hot or cold temperature. Significant odor temperature associations are depicted by saturated colors. All other cases failed to reach significance. There is some preliminary support that cultural beliefs might influence odor-temperature associations, but alone they explain only a small portion of the data, i.

Another possibility is that, as in the case of color, cross-modal associations are shaped by language. Odor—color associations were found to reflect the source more often when odors were named with source-based terms e. We examined the main content descriptors from the odor naming task, disregarding modifiers. Abstract smell terms express a smell quality characteristic of a range of objects and do not refer to one particular object as in stink.

Source-based terms denote specific objects e. Following the procedure in de Valk et al. Fixed factors were language Thai, Dutch, Maniq , type of odor description source-based, abstract , and familiarity rating unfamiliar, somewhat familiar, familiar.

Random intercepts were added for participants and items to control for individual variation. The dependent variable was temperature consistency, where the temperature was considered consistent if the same cup was chosen in both sessions, and inconsistent otherwise. So odor-temperature associations were not more consistent when the odor was described with a particular type of descriptor, or when it was judged as more familiar.

We also examined the effect of naming accuracy on temperature associations by comparing correct vs.