POTATOE

A rotten potato hidden in a bag, and left in my room, made for the nastiest smell on earth, well, maybe just my quadrant.

Background: Mike and I taught an english class which ended about three weeks ago, and about five weeks ago we played a very exciting game of "hot potato". In this game each player had to say a color in english and toss the potato to another player. For example, the colors were: silver, purple, teak, indian red, maroon, gold, etc. I would say "california violet" and toss it to Lupe who would say "soldier blue" who would toss it to Mike . . . we could play that game for hours.

Science: When we smell, air currents infused with chemicals, in this case it was moldy starch, swirl up the nose, passing over the moist olfactory epithelium on the roof of the nasal cavity and its 12 million odor-detecting cells. The olfactory receptor proteins detect scents and via sensory nerves, the signals are sent to the Olfactory bulb (scientific american, 12).

Result: Two days ago I got back from a trip to LA, upon arrival I went into my room and there was a thick, almost foglike smell; it wreaked. The odor was not something I was used to--in other words, it was completely new to my olfactory bulb.

It was a strange smell, almost like old soggy dog food, but I searched my room and could not find anything at all. I then thought one of my animals urinated, I couldn't find that either. So I opened up a window and gave up the search. That was until my mom came in (she came over to visit) and insisted on cleaning the entire room until we found the source of the smell. I thought of that two days ago, I just didn't want to do it. It is a good thing we did though because it was at that point that I found my teacher-bag with my supplies. Inside of the bag was the potato (please see the above picture).

I now know why all the irish came to America.