Why does metal smell like metal?

All the contaminents in the air, water etc. Simply the reaction of any two structures breaking down or combining or recombing will give of a smell of reaction. I do not believe you could have a pure smell as this would be the metalic structure reacting with itself which would make it unstable and of little use.

<Wheeze>

Why does anything smell of anything? Something to do with the olifactory organs. Smell is a very useful early-warning system. People walk the other side of the street when they see me. <Cough>

Metal can't react with itself, as it is crystalline. <Phrrrrrp>. Metal just doesn't self-decompose unless it is radioactive, unlike the old mattress I found outside Wilkinson's last night <burp>. There's a fair whiff coming off it <Belch> but it'll do for a few nights.

I would believe it has something to do with the corrosion process. If a metal did not corode at all either oxidation or galvanic corrosion or other type it might not have a smell.

Does a highly reactive metal smell more metally than a relatively inert one? Steel should have much less of a whiff than say magnesium if it was purely a question of reactivity?

My first thought was ionisation, hands up who thinks a battery (torch cell) has a smell?

I know PP3s don't taste nice

<Cough, sneeze> Depends where you lick 'em! The terminals on a charged-up one give quite a zing when licked <sniffle>. Only pleasure I get these days <Burp>.

Just went down to our material storage to smell all different types of metal.

I gotta say that the aluminum smells less intense than 4140 steel.

The most intense I found to be titanium.

Smell for yourself.

And keep those answers coming, my friends!

P.S.: New thread: Which stinks more ? Disposeable or rechargeable battery? :)

P.S.: New thread: Which stinks more ? Disposeable or rechargeable battery? :)

Naaaah! Can't get high on either of them <burp>.

Sitting on a park bench
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.

Sun streaking cold
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.

Feeling alone
the army's up the road
salvation à la mode and
a cup of tea.
Stinky Pete my friend
don't start away uneasy
you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
when the ice that
clings on to your beard is
screaming agony?
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

Bravo!

Led Zep, I knew I'd heard that name before...

Er, no. not the zeppelin.

Ian Anderson and company hiding under the skirt of a long dead Mr. Tull serenading the most famous of all pneumonia riddled urban-outdoorsmen, Aqualung!

I saw them in concert not too long ago. I was jumping up and down in the front row like a teenage girl. Good times. . .

-A-

Bingo!

Congrats Pete on your wonderful invention!

Sounds like you could use a bit of the Green Fairy.

Can't tell which they were, but the ones in my studfinder that hadn't been used in about four years. They must have been organic cause they were trying to grow.

It was the PP9s that I was wary of after trying one (food naturally scarce in our house)

Cast iron ... mmmmm

Grinding out transfer ports....

taste it in your mouth....

It occured to me one day, while watching a toddler, why I seemed to instinctively know what all kinds of things would taste like.

often times the oils emit odor. But I agree the oxidization process is most likely the culprit.

Like bread going stale? Her ya go Stinky Pete. For you and the Pidgeons.

It seems to be neither corrosion nor oils. Old machinists used to show off by distinguishing blindfolded and without touching between freshly ground and machined copper, bronze, steel etc.

No doubt: it is the full moon!

Shouldn't the question be "why does metal smells like rust"?

...The resulting oxide must be the culprit!

Ah... By George I think he's got it!

Whats up with stainless steel then? Or gold?

The other day my mate came round and lit up (I know!) I said 'that smells sulphurous,'

He said 'You've been grinding steel', and sure enough, I had..

mysterious eh?

Oh dear, the !ole! factories mus be suffering like the sight and hearing. I could've sworn corroded steel or aluminium smelt less 'metally' than freshly machined ( or etched??)

Rust doesn't smell like metal to me, well didn't when I was young and had senses. Spent plenty of time with it in most of it's forms too!

I read somewhere in a chemistry journal (I don't remember which one) that some metals emit an odor due to reactions of the metal with organic impurities adsorbed onto the surface. So the volatile "metal odor" molecules would then consist of purely organic compounds, and/or metal salts of organic compounds, and/or organometallic compounds (in which the metal atom is covalently bound). Reactive metals would tend to give stronger odors, for example iron. Very reactive metals like aluminum and magnesium emit no odor because their surface is passivated (physically blocked) by nonvolatile oxides. Gold -- the least reactive metal -- should have no odor.

Hi,

you will smell or taste the reaction products of impurities or minor alloy components with organic acids in your fingerprints or phenolic binders from grinding paper.

I didn't try but I think it unlikely that titanium really smells as nerly perfect protection from a dense and tight oxide layer.

Try metals with impurity level below 10^-6 , maybe then you get the smell of these metals reaction products only.

RHABE

no smell on the titanium, 'cept cutting fluid. Tastes like chicken though.

Think I've wet myself! (chicken)

What?

"Chicken" in ape-slang, is a synonym for "Tastes like nothing"

As in:

"The food there is so tasteless that even when you burp, it reminds you of nothing at all"

what is ape-slang?

Ape-Slang is about slang-bits which were somehow found to be similar in totally unrelated cultures.

The use of similar analogies sometimes find surprising ways to cross cultures, but nevertheless, points to a universality of an issue or a subject.

This helps.

So does this.

Reminds me or reading that the smell of the ocean is rotting vegetation along the shore and one does not detect it when at sea away from the shore.

Thanx 4 the link, Rummel! Interesting.