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What is it about a burned match?

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shmokes:
It's definitely not the flame.  Try using a lighter, for example, and you'll get no results whatsoever.  Regardless of Mythbusters, anybody who's used the match trick knows it works.  I'm pretty sure that it's just an overpowering oder that masks the poo smell.

MaximRecoil:

--- Quote from: shmokes on December 30, 2007, 09:50:42 am ---It's definitely not the flame.  Try using a lighter, for example, and you'll get no results whatsoever.  Regardless of Mythbusters, anybody who's used the match trick knows it works.  I'm pretty sure that it's just an overpowering oder that masks the poo smell.

--- End quote ---

I don't know, I've never tried the match thing or a lighter or anything else, but those are the only two things going on when you light a match, i.e., the flame consumes gasses and the burning/burned chemicals from the match head give off their own odor. So if it does indeed work to mask and/or eliminate odor, then it is one of those two things responsible, or both.

Jdurg:
Match heads are typically full of oxidizers and reducing agents which can do a good job of destroying chemicals.  Crap typically stinks due to organic sulfur compounds, and perhaps the phosphorus compounds in the match head, when volatalized, help neutralize the organic sulfur gases.  I know that phosphorus sesquisulfide is a major component of match heads.  I just don't know what it turns into when it has been 'struck'.  Phosphorus is, however, heavily involved in a burning match.

RayB:
Well let's see, you did 3 things before trying the match. My bet is the smell dissipated by then.

Either that or the sulphuric smell somehow neutralizes something in the nasal smell receptors temporarily. I don't think it actually neutralizes the smell itself. Just your ability to smell it.

shmokes:
You can certainly still smell the match, so it's not shutting down the olfactory entirely, that's for sure.

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