Perfume is Amazing

This most recent episode RuPaul'd Drag Race featured a perfume challenge.

Jinkx is my favorite.

This episode warmed my heart primarily because I did something very similar with my chemistry students my first year teaching.

My students got a taste of real world chemistry and they really enjoyed the project. Originally, I had drafted this lesson for a class on the history of science and I just decided that I was going to do it. It started off with my teaching the students how perfume worked.

- volatile oils are extracted from natural sources
- these oils are dissolved in ethanol and combined with water to provide a nicer feel for the skin.

Water and alcohol evaporate leaving scented skin. We also went a little deeper into the idea of perfume bouquets and top, middle, and bass notes.

My students then had to make their own perfumes, describe the process they followed, create an ad for their perfumes and part of their grade would be decided by their peers judging the scent for themselves.

Here are some things to consider:

If you're a fan a project based learning, perfume can go cross-curricular and also help students see a more creative side of science industry.

There are many approaches you can take with perfume:
- solutions
- like dissolves like, misciblity, polarity
- vapor pressure as related to the scent notes of a bouquet

There are more possibilities.