How many times has it happened to you: you’re sitting around watching a [--1--] of Friends and you think: Man, if only I could catch a whiff of that hazelnut mochaccino they’re all pretending to drink. Well, me neither.

But engineers have now developed a programmable, [--2--] that, like it or not, brings us one step closer to realizing the dream of smell-a-vision. Their design is described in the journal Angewandte Chemie. [Hyunsu Kim et al, An X–Y Addressable Matrix Odor-Releasing System Using an On–Off Switchable Device]

TV [--3--] us with sight and sound. Why not smells? All you’d need is a box that would sit near the set and generate fragrances that match the images on screen: a woman’s perfume or a hot apple pie. But how big would the device have to be to generate thousands of odors?

To keep the dimensions down, the scientists envision using a 100-by-100 grid, so that just 200 on/off switches could unleash 10,000 stored bouquets. Which they say makes the whole thing “[--4--].”

The question then becomes: why would anyone want to do it? [--5--] there are some things that are best left unsmelled. Because a sound cue is perfectly sufficient to tell us where Archie Bunker or Al Bundy has just been.
【視聽版科學(xué)小組榮譽(yù)出品】
rerun odor-emitting device tickles quite doable Presumably
"聞香"看電視 你有沒有經(jīng)歷過這種事情:你無所事事的坐著看《老友記》的回放，想著要是我也可以聞一聞他們正要喝的榛子摩卡就好了。好吧，其實我也經(jīng)歷過。 其實，工程師們已經(jīng)發(fā)明了一種可編程香味釋放裝置，不管你喜不喜歡，它讓我們離嗅覺影像的實現(xiàn)更進(jìn)一步。他們的設(shè)計發(fā)表在《應(yīng)用化學(xué)》期刊上。 電視通過影像和聲音吸引我們。為何不嘗試一下嗅覺吸引？我們所需要的就是一個放在電視機(jī)的附近的盒子，它能夠根據(jù)屏幕上的畫面產(chǎn)生相應(yīng)的味道，比如說一個女人的香水或者一個熱乎乎的蘋果派。那這個產(chǎn)生上千種味道的裝置該有多大呢？ 為減小它的體積，科學(xué)家設(shè)想利用100×100的網(wǎng)格元件，這樣僅需200個開關(guān)控件就可以釋放1萬種預(yù)存的味道。這樣就增加了這件事的可行性。 問題接踵而至：所有人都希望這樣嗎？不想的原因大概就是不想最好的東西被其他人聞到吧。畢竟一個聲音提示就足以告訴我們亞奇?邦克或者奧?邦迪剛才在哪。