Friday, January 14, 2022

A fun and funny-looking instrument

Chuck McGinley, using a Nasal Ranger
Credit: Caroline Yang for The New York Times
Via the New York Times, a very interesting (and interesting-looking!) instrument: 
Chuck McGinley, a chemical engineer, stepped out of his car, eyed the smokestack of an animal processing plant rising above the treetops, and inhaled deeply. At first he smelled nothing except the faint, sweet fragrance of the nearby trees.

Suddenly, the wind picked up. “We have an oh-my-God smell!” Mr. McGinley exclaimed.

Immediately one of his colleagues pressed a Nasal Ranger to his nose. The 14-inch-long smell-measuring device, which looks like a cross between a radar gun and a bugle, is one of Mr. McGinley’s most significant inventions.

Pretty interesting article. Also, you could really imagine someone with a GC/MS strapped to their back, connected to the Nasal Ranger, collecting chromatograms while they were locating smells around their neighborhood.  

1 comment:

  1. https://www.glsciences.eu/html/phaser-about.html

    The human nose is an incredible detector for aroma/mal-odour components. Gas Chromatography Olfactometry (GC-O) is a bioassay that measures human response to odorants separated by gas chromatography.

    ReplyDelete

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