Engineers Take Step Closer to Smell-a-Vision"聞香"看電視

　　How many times has it happened to you: you’re sitting around watching a rerun 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.你有沒有經歷過這種事情: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，其實我也經歷過。

　　But engineers have now developed a programmable, odor-emitting device 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]其實，工程師們已經發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更進一步。他們的設計發表在《應用化學》期刊上。

　　TV tickles 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?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的附近的盒子，它能夠根據屏幕上的畫面產生相應的味道，比如說一個女人的香水或者一個熱乎乎的蘋果派。那這個產生上千種味道的裝置該有多大呢？

　　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 “quite doable.”為減小它的體積，科學家設想利用100×100的網格元件，這樣僅需200個開關控件就可以釋放1萬種預存的味道。這樣就增加了這件事的可行性。

　　The question then becomes: why would anyone want to do it? Presumably 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.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。

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