How does poo smell?
I mean, I know WHY poo smells, I've read the scientific literature. (And it's brown because bile is a purplish color, did you know that?)
Let's say you'd poo'd and there is poo in the pot - it's completely submerged, nothing sticking up above the water.
Now, smells are actually just tiny particles of the item (so when you smell food, you're actually sniffing up teeny airborne food particles - it's the same with all smells).
With the submerged poo, the particles in the air should disperse quickly, but they do not. If you should somehow forget to flush and come back later on, the room still smells of poo. But the particles should have dispersed, and without bubbles or particle action of some sort, there shold be no smell. Mebbe there are microbubbles that I can't see?
.I mean, I know WHY poo smells, I've read the scientific literature. (And it's brown because bile is a purplish color, did you know that?)
Let's say you'd poo'd and there is poo in the pot - it's completely submerged, nothing sticking up above the water.
Now, smells are actually just tiny particles of the item (so when you smell food, you're actually sniffing up teeny airborne food particles - it's the same with all smells).
With the submerged poo, the particles in the air should disperse quickly, but they do not. If you should somehow forget to flush and come back later on, the room still smells of poo. But the particles should have dispersed, and without bubbles or particle action of some sort, there shold be no smell. Mebbe there are microbubbles that I can't see?
.
The poo dissolves into the water, and standing water tends to slowly vaporise in a process we call "evaporation". Hence the air around the toilet becomes filled with poo-infused water vapor.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the bacteria that causes stinkiness quickly multiplies in the toilet bowl environment, making the poo stinkier than it was when it first emerged from it's old home into its new home.
I'd considered the evaporation option, but I dismissed it because I believed that evaporated water didn't have the capacity to carry much cargo.
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, I also recall a recent news story about airborne microbes contributing to snowfall.
Not to mention that most of what you are smelling is reduced sulfur compounds like thiols and sulfides, which can float up and become airborne much more easily than the bacteria themselves.
ReplyDelete