So after smelling a WHOLE bunch of smells and looking at these letters and numbers associated with them, we figured out a bunch of things:
1. Different smells CAN be made of the same atoms. In our case, we saw C, H, and O repeatedly!
2. Different smells, while made of the same atoms, can have different amounts of those atoms, like 8 of C or 10 of C.
3. Some smells may have all the same letters and numbers but be TOTALLY different smells. We figured out that they must be arranged different. And we drew some models to think about this.
1. Different smells CAN be made of the same atoms. In our case, we saw C, H, and O repeatedly!
2. Different smells, while made of the same atoms, can have different amounts of those atoms, like 8 of C or 10 of C.
3. Some smells may have all the same letters and numbers but be TOTALLY different smells. We figured out that they must be arranged different. And we drew some models to think about this.
We had a great discussion about how some of the models didn't show connections between the atoms and what this must mean about the odor. In the end, we've still got some work to do about all those letters and numbers and how they relate to both why things smell different and how smells can change over time!