How can you tell it's an orange just by smelling?

Imagine a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table. Now close your eyes and take a slow, deep sniff. Something sweet and bright tickles your nose. You know it's an orange before you even look!

But your eyes are closed, and the orange sits quietly in its bowl. So how can you tell it's an orange just by smelling? Let's find out together.

An orange peel is covered in little bumpy dots. Each dot is a small pocket full of orange oil. That oil carries the orange's strong, sweet smell.

Little bits of that oil drift out of the peel and into the air. They are much too small to see. Those floating bits are the orange's scent, which means a smell that belongs to one kind of thing.

The scent floats through the kitchen, all the way to you. When you breathe in through your nose, you pull those bits inside. Sniff, sniff! A big sniff pulls in even more of them.

Deep inside your nose is a small, soft patch that catches smells. The orange bits land on that patch and stick for a moment. The patch notices them right away.

Then your nose sends a quick message to your brain. The message tells your brain what this smell is like. What do you think your brain does next?

Your brain remembers! It keeps smells you have met before, like treasures in a box. Each orange you have peeled or eaten left its smell in there.

So your brain looks through its box and finds a match. Sweet, bright and fresh, that is the orange scent! Your brain tells you it's an orange, and your eyes never had to look.

Here is our special word: scent. The peel's oil floats into your nose, and your brain remembers that scent.

Sleep well, and may your clever nose find many lovely smells tomorrow.