full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Luca Turin: The science of scent

Unscramble the Blue Letters


This is cis-3-hexene-1-ol. It smells of cut grass. This is cis-3-hexene-1-thiol, and this smells of rotetn eggs, OK? Now, you will have noticed that vodka never smells of rotten eggs. If it does, you put the glass down, you go to a different bar. This is — in other words, we never get the O-H — we never mistake it for an S-H, OK? Like, at no concentration, even pure, you know, if you smelt pure ethanol, it doesn’t smell of rotten eggs. Conversely, there is no ccitaonerontn at which the sulfur compound will smell like vokda. It’s very hard to explain this by molecular riecitoongn. Now, I showed this to a physicist friend of mine who has a puofornd distaste for bglooiy, and he says, "That’s easy! The things are a different color!" (Laughter)

Open Cloze


This is cis-3-hexene-1-ol. It smells of cut grass. This is cis-3-hexene-1-thiol, and this smells of ______ eggs, OK? Now, you will have noticed that vodka never smells of rotten eggs. If it does, you put the glass down, you go to a different bar. This is — in other words, we never get the O-H — we never mistake it for an S-H, OK? Like, at no concentration, even pure, you know, if you smelt pure ethanol, it doesn’t smell of rotten eggs. Conversely, there is no _____________ at which the sulfur compound will smell like _____. It’s very hard to explain this by molecular ___________. Now, I showed this to a physicist friend of mine who has a ________ distaste for _______, and he says, "That’s easy! The things are a different color!" (Laughter)

Solution


  1. rotten
  2. concentration
  3. biology
  4. recognition
  5. profound
  6. vodka

Original Text


This is cis-3-hexene-1-ol. It smells of cut grass. This is cis-3-hexene-1-thiol, and this smells of rotten eggs, OK? Now, you will have noticed that vodka never smells of rotten eggs. If it does, you put the glass down, you go to a different bar. This is — in other words, we never get the O-H — we never mistake it for an S-H, OK? Like, at no concentration, even pure, you know, if you smelt pure ethanol, it doesn’t smell of rotten eggs. Conversely, there is no concentration at which the sulfur compound will smell like vodka. It’s very hard to explain this by molecular recognition. Now, I showed this to a physicist friend of mine who has a profound distaste for biology, and he says, "That’s easy! The things are a different color!" (Laughter)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
top note 3
cut grass 3
rotten eggs 3
lush heart 2
smell molecular 2
ford motor 2


Important Words


  1. bar
  2. biology
  3. compound
  4. concentration
  5. conversely
  6. cut
  7. distaste
  8. eggs
  9. ethanol
  10. explain
  11. friend
  12. glass
  13. grass
  14. hard
  15. laughter
  16. mistake
  17. molecular
  18. noticed
  19. physicist
  20. profound
  21. pure
  22. put
  23. recognition
  24. rotten
  25. showed
  26. smell
  27. smells
  28. smelt
  29. sulfur
  30. vodka
  31. words