ChemSemBlog

Professor Jeffrey A. Turk’s presentation on Thursday, November 12 was understandable, easy to follow, and interesting. I thought it was interesting for most of us, because colognes and perfumes are what many of us use, and we were able to learn about them chemically. Also, it was fun for us to smell some fragrances the presenter brought for us to smell. He is an assistant professor of chemistry at Alma College, and I believe he is looking forward to developing more efficient ways to synthesize a natural identical sandalwood oil. If he is successful, his synthesis method will save much more money that is used in synthesizing the oil.

I learned about many biological, biochemical, and organic chemical information that are related to smell and fragrances. I learned that a molecule must be volatile, small, and relatively hydrophobic in order for one to smell it. I also learned that each enantiomer of the same molecule binds differently to the olfactory receptors and different amounts of enantiomers are needed in order to detect the smell. As much as enantiomers produce different effects on human as drugs, stereochemistry was also important in smell. Sandalwood was really valuable and expensive, because of the oil it produces. Sandalwood oil is used as a fragrance ingredient, and steam distillation of the wood was needed to take the oil from it.

Three questions I had in mind were 1) How much oil is produced from one sandalwood tree?, 2) If the natural oil and natural identical oil are the same in molecular level, why is the price of those two different?, and 3) How long does it take to synthesize sandalwood oil?

I would describe this presentation to my friend as this: “Interesting presentation by Professor Turk was about how we smell and how fragrances are made.

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The guest speaker for this week’s Seminar in Chemistry was Jefferey A. Turk. He has worked as a fragrance maker. Now, he is a professor at Alma College, researching about synthesizing molecules which smell like odors of nature. Overall, he spoke clearly and slowly, and explained contents easily.

He started the seminar introducing us to the mechanism of how we smell. He said that, to be a fragrance molecule, it needs to be volatile, less than three hundred grams per mole and hydrophobic. If the molecule is non-volatile and hydrophilic, it would not reach the olfactory receptor and we cannot smell it. He, also, said that stereochemistry is important in producing fragrance. If the molecule has S conformation, it would have different smells from R conformation molecules.

The benefit of manufacturing artificial smells are, that we can save natural resource and make fragrance cheaper than using real natural oil. The price of synthetic compounds is one thousand times cheaper than the price of natural oil. The interesting thing was that the main materials for popular perfume to people are from excrement of animals. For an example, musk is from feces of deer.

Throughout the presentation, I was wondering whether the organic compound has any effects on human body. He also said that there is an organization which is responsible for regulating and supervising the safety of fragrance.

It is very interesting to know about applications of organic chemistry, and behind the story of synthesizing fragrance. I would tell my friends that the seminar was about making various smells, or fragrance, by mixing chemical compounds.

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I have to say that this week’s lecture was my favorite out of all the lectures that the guest speakers gave this semester. The reason that I found it most interesting was probably because the topic was the chemistry of perfuming and how scents are made. I think that the aspect of chemistry that I love the most is the smells that come from all the reactions, whether they are good or bad smelling.

One thing that I learned from this lecture was that in order to have a smell, molecules must have a vapor pressure and they also must be hydrophobic in order to interact with smell receptors in the nose. Something that I would like to know more about would be why Indian Sandalwood trees are practically the only sought after sandalwood trees for their oils, and why no one uses Carene Sandalwoods for their oils. Seems like there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the two of them, but then again I’m no expert.

Another thing that I found interesting about the lecture was that at one point the speaker mentioned that one reaction needs to be performed at higher temperatures for a period of time in order to reach completion. Then he said that they got an idea and put the chemicals in a microwave oven for a few minutes, and the reaction proceeded better than they had achieved using the old method.

In explaining what this lecture was about to one of my non-science friends, I would say that it was about the chemistry behind making perfumes and colognes. I think that this would have to be the easiest out of all the lectures to describe.

As for the speaker, Dr. Jeffery A. Turk is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Alma College. He started out working in the pharmaceutical industry and then moved on to become a perfume chemist. Afterwards he decided to become a teacher and has been teaching ever since. His speaking style is smooth and very understandable, and he speaks as if he is very into what the topic is about. Perhaps my favorite part of the lecture was when he passed around the papers with the different scents on them.

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The speaker this past Thursday was Jeffrey A. Turk, Ph.D, and he gave an interesting presentation on fragrances. This was a new and unique area of chemistry for me, and it proved to be an engaging presentation. What added a lot to the entertainment factor of this presentation was definitely the smell samples that he handed out. It really added a hands on experience that served to enhance his already interesting presentation.

What made the topic so interesting was because of the familiarity with smells  as something that we all experience, but never really think about. This presentation gave us an opportunity to learn more about the process of smelling, which seemed to have a lot of unknown things about how it works, especially in regard to the receptor. For instance, we learned that the receptor has seven helices, that their are 400 kinds of receptors, and that single receptor can perceive multiple odors. It was interesting to learn more about the odor threshold and how that factors in to prices for industry.

Turk also talked a lot about the fragrance industry because of his prior work, and how it has helped him with his research. We were able to learn more about the difference between natural oils, nature identical, and synthetic.

Overall I would say that Turk was able to give a fascinating presentation  and that he was able to keep us at the edge of our seats. We were able to learn more about fragrances as well as his work with sandalwood. In addition he was able to provide us with good answers to the several questions we had for him.

If I were to describe this presentation to my non-science friend, i would say that it was about discovering new ways to synthesize smells and trying to make more efficient ways to produce them.

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