Science Memes @mander.xyz fossilesque @mander.xyz 1w ago

Petrichor

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Wording is funky. To clarify:

The rain smell is due to a compound called geosmin. The bacteria that produces it is Streptomyces.

When I taught microbiology lab, I would grow a petri dish of Streptomyces during one particular class and have the students smell it
- You mean.... You can ... Bottle up petrichore ??? How come is there no wide range of perfume/candle/lotion and whatnot?
  
  Can I make it at home, if so, how would I go about it with everyday items? Can streptomyces cause health issues?
  
  There absolutely are petrichor scented things
  
  There's like an indian family/company that's been making some hiqh quality petrichor perfume for idk at least 100 years, probably several hundreds, if not a thousand or more idk.
  
  I forget what it's called you can probably look it up with perfume pertrichor india
  
  edit it's called "Mitti Attar"
  
  They might've been making it for 10,000 years for all I know. I don't know shit.
  
  Yup. I have a shaving soap like that called "Summer Storm."
  
  https://maggardrazors.com/products/chiseled-face-summer-storm-artisan-shaving-soap-4oz
  
  I've never smelled the stuff but apparently the smell of rain is something people try to bottle.
  
  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/smell-of-rain-kannauj-perfume-mitti-attar-india
  
  That's the romanticized, traditional Indian cowshit mix trying to approximate it. (Not doing a disparaging stereotype here, that's just literally how the article says they make it.)
  
  I'd be surprised if it actually contains the compound we're talking about.
  
  i Kind of doubt it. in a video i saw if the process they were using hardfired bricks. i don't believe any organic compounds would survive the heat.
  
  (dung might be a better term for what you were referring to. i seem to remember that because of the way they feed their cattle the dung has a very high fibre content which makes it a good source for building material. it's nowhere as gross as the diarrhea like consistency we get from cows in Europe)
  
  I have some of this. It smells pretty good
  
  Yup https://youtu.be/bl7K3lRPLYo
- Well the smell of rain is actually petrichor, it just has a combination of geosmin and ozone and other chemicals that make that smell.
  
  Geosmin on its own is just a part of it.

88 comments