What Is the Science Behind Smell?

Smell is when tiny invisible messengers from things around us travel to your nose and tell it what they are.

Tiny messengers are like little dots that float in the air, you can’t see them, but they’re there. When you smell something, like your favorite snack, these tiny messengers go into your nose and help you know what it is.

Your nose has special sniffers inside it that catch these tiny messengers. Once the sniffers catch them, they send a message to your brain, kind of like how your eyes send messages to your brain when you see something.

Your brain is like a detective who knows all about smells. When it gets the message from your nose, it says, “Oh, that’s chocolate!” or “That’s grass!” and suddenly you know what you’re smelling, just like when you taste something sweet or sour.

So, smell is like having a super-smart friend in your head who helps you recognize everything around you by the tiny messengers coming from them.