Comment by piskov
1 day ago
This is wrong.
Same with perfume knock-offs
Spectrometer doesn’t tell you quantities, mixes, what have you.
You can emulate 90% of the first smell but never in life you can replicate entire bouquet, aftersmell, propriety molecules, etc.
Spectrography can absolutely tell you concentrations if you compare it to a test solution with a known concentration.
Have you ever seen that triangular chart comparing concentrations, impurities , etc? It's generally presented on log scales and very effectively demonstrates the often enormous number of trace-level compounds in otherwise substances deemed pure. It's the absolute pinnacle when it comes to teaching chem students about purity.
No doubt you're correct but it only takes one compound in trace amounts whose odor can be detected in parts per million to throw out a seemingly identical comparison done with spectroscopy.
Right, calibration is everything but sometimes that's damn hard to achieve. Also, here we're dealing with natural substances (at least some are like cola leaves). It's not hard to imagine there'd be thousands of organic molecules involved albeit most of them in minute amounts.