Saturday, January 14, 2006

Be a Perfume Chemist


Alcohol is a good solvent for dissolving the fragrant oil solutes from herbs and flowers.

Place one of the following ingredients in a clear film canister: cloves, vanilla bean, cinnamon bark, orange or lemon peel bits, lavender or rose petals.

Cover with two tablespoons (30ml) of rubbing alcohol and secure the lid. Shake once a day for a week.

When the solution smells more like the fragrance than the rubbing alcohol, it's ready. Dab the scented rubbing alcohol on your wrist, and smell the fragrance.

You've concocted perfume! For stronger scents, replace the solute with a fresh one after a week. Experiment with the solutes to find your favorite scent.

**It takes 8,000 crushed roses to make just one gram (barely a dab) of rose oil for perfume. Luckily, scientists are able to analyze the molecules that make up a flowers scent and then artificially reproduce the natural fragrant oils with chemicals in the laboratory. The newly scented solute is dissolved in an unscented solvent. The result is a flower friendly solution- PERFUME!

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