Smells Travel Through the Air to Your Nose
Atlas stands in a sunny kitchen holding a warm cinnamon muffin fresh from the oven, nose lifted high with a big curious smile, while wavy orange lines drift through the air from the muffin toward a child's nose nearby.
- Identify air as a real material even though we cannot see it.
- Explain that smells travel through the air from one place to another.
- Predict which objects in a room might send a smell through the air.
- Compare things we can see with things we can feel but cannot see, such as air.
Key terms
- air
- the matter all around us that we cannot see but can feel
- matter
- anything that takes up space, including air, water, and rocks
- smell pieces
- tiny pieces of an object that float into the air and reach your nose
- invisible
- something that is really there but too small or clear to see
Air Is Real Matter
Air is all around you right now, even though you cannot see it with your eyes. Air takes up space just like water or a rock, which means air is matter. You can prove air is real by feeling it push on your skin when the wind blows or when you wave your hand. Air being invisible does not make it nothing; it is a real material that is simply too clear to see.
How Smells Travel
When something smells, like a warm muffin or a fresh flower, tiny pieces of that thing float off and drift into the air. These smell pieces are far too small for your eyes to spot. When they float into your nose, your nose senses them and you smell the object. That is why you can smell dinner from another room before you ever see the food cooking on the stove.
Seeing Versus Smelling
Some things we learn about by seeing them, and some we learn about by smelling. You can see a rock or a marble clearly, but those hard, dry objects do not send smell pieces into the air, so they have little smell. Foods and flowers do release smell pieces, so you can smell them even from far away. Comparing what you see with what you smell shows that air carries information your eyes cannot.
Worked examples
Explain how you can smell popcorn from another room.
- Tiny smell pieces float off the warm popcorn into the air.
- The air carries those pieces from the kitchen toward you.
- When the pieces reach your nose, you smell the popcorn.
Answer: Tiny smell pieces travel through the air from the popcorn all the way to your nose.
Activity
Drag each item to show whether it could send a smell through the air
Practice
Predict which would send a smell: a flower or a dry rock.
Explain one way you can tell that air is really there.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Air is nothing because you cannot see it.Air is real matter that takes up space, and you can feel it move when the wind blows.
- Your nose moves to the food to smell it.Your nose stays put while tiny smell pieces travel through the air to reach it.
Check your understanding
You smell popcorn from the other room. How did the smell reach your nose?
Atlas says air is matter even though you cannot see it. What is one way you know air is really there?
Recap
Air is real matter all around us even though we cannot see it, and you can feel it when the wind blows. Smells travel because tiny pieces of an object float into the air and drift all the way to your nose.
Reflect
What is a favorite smell that has traveled to your nose?