Why is it whenever I fart while taking a shower or a bath, my gas smells a lot sweeter (not necessarily more pleasant, but more like someone snuck up on me while I was sleeping and crammed a bunch of rotten pineapples up my butt instead of a month old dead skunk that died from ingesting too much turpentine)?
Silly question, humorous presentation, but serious curiosity.
Probably because many of the nasty, smelly gases that normally provide your fart’s piquant bouquet are readily absorbed by water, and thus never reach your noise. Whether these dissolved compounds remain in the water, or adhere to skin and hair, from which they may be released once conditions change, is a mystery to which only experimental science, or possibly Cecil, can provide an answer.
This is the exact kind of question and the exact kind of answer that make this such a great place. Thanks guys!
I think you’re getting the bong effect: the water is absorbing something in your gas that smells bad, and allowing the sweet-smelling components to escape. I’ve had the same thing happen to me. This site lists the ingredients in a dose of flatulence, and Wikipedia goes into a little more detail.
I’m no chemist, but I’m thinking if the gas coming out of you (98 F) and the water (100+ F) are warm enough, they’d have enough energy in them to help catalyze a reaction. With all of those gases in one fart, the potential number of chemical reactions is pretty huge. I’m going to just sort of take it on faith that the water pulls something–probably a sulfur compound–out of the fart.
Or could be that the less pleasant constituents are less soluble in water.
Since the nasal epithelium is bathed in moisture, chemicals dissolved in water vapour/aerosol may be preferentially selected to stimulate the olfactory apparatus through partitioning into the vapour also made more mobile by the vapour movement.
Thus the more polar compounds may be less offensive.
No Jurph - no major reactions.
Thanks guys. Like Eonwe said, it’s great to be able to come to a place, ask such a strange, stupid question like this and get a serious answer. Thanks again.
Same is true for me.