I was reminiscing with a friend and recalled an incident from my childhood. A friend and I were smelling my sister’s perfumes and came up with a wacky idea: if perfume “A” smells good, and perfume “B” smells good, let’s mix them up and make them smell REALLY good!
So we did and left the room for a couple of minutes. When we returned we saw that the perfume had little brown balls floating in it. I know it was a chemical reaction but what exactly happened?
MaryAnn
No, stupid, it’s a boat!
Since I didn’t see it myself, it’s hard to determine exactly what you mean by “little brown balls floating in it”. Based on my mental picture of this, I’m guessing it’s one of these:
One perfume had a polar solvent base (e.g. water, alcohol) and one had a non-polar solvent base (e.g. mineral oil); what you were seeing was droplets of one solvent floating in the other. Usually you’d expect two distinct layers, though, like in oil and vinegar salad dressing. Not terribly likely based on your description but possible.
The perfumes had different but mutually soluble bases (water and alcohol, for instance); however, one of the essential oils or other components of the perfumes was much less soluble in the mixture than in its preferred solvent. What you were seeing was droplets (or particles, maybe) of that oil/compound floating in the combined perfume.
There actually was a chemical reaction of some sort and you were seeing flocculation/precipitation as a result of that. This one strikes me as the least likely of the three because I can’t think of any reason for perfumes to react with each other that way, but I’d hesitate to rule it out completely.