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Why Do Some CDRs Smell Like Almonds?
bertok asks: "I have several spindles of CD-Rs of various brands that I use at home and work, and some of them have a very strong almond odour when opened. Does anyone know what causes that? I know that Hydrogen Cyanide has a distinctive almond odour, but so does a range of other organic chemicals. Can any Slashdot readers with a chemistry background enlighten us as to the possible source of the smell?"
This is just another April fools right?
mmmm, cynanide laced CDs.
Those evil terrorists!
You ARE kidding right?
In Soviet Russia CDRS smells like YOU!
..by the media industry to slowly poison all the people who "steal" music ;-)
The flaw in their plan is that sales still won't go up cos they've just killed potential consumers!
To summarise, don't touch CDRs that smell of almonds. They are "not good". In fact, they will probably break your legs and cause you tremendous pain.
Thank God we can learn everything we need to know from the movies.
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
There is a lacquer on all CD-Rs that has a distinct smell. I don't recall it smelling like almonds though ... I remember it being rather pungent and gross.
Because CD-R, like almonds, get tastier when burned a bit...
It's a plot by the RIAA to finally rid themselves
of those troublesome pirates.
My TDK CD-Rs smell like almonds! Thank goodness I'm not the only one to wonder about this! Have you also noticed that, once burned, the smell goes away. Magic disappearing almonds...
----- "All right. It was a miracle. Can we go now?"
This is just stupid. Either slashdot is further down the tube than I thought, or someone thought that April fool's day was a good day to post meaningless drivel.
...one might ask why *almonds* smell like
almonds. And people *eat* that stuff!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
My cat's breath smell's like catfood!
Does anybody's wireless router smell like peanut butter? Maybe it's just me.
IANAChemist, but the son of one, and my best guess is that it's benzaldehyde left over from the production of the plastic.
t p://www.bartleby.com/65/al/aldehyde.html
http://www.bartleby.com/65/be/benzalde.html
ht
I don't have a link to back this up, but I'm sure one of the CDR manufacturer websites can verify this. Cyanide is used as part of the dye in certain CDR's - that would explain the Almond smell.
...smells like ass...
...and why do I have so much porno in my history log?
Or even CD writers.. All those mass produced without copy protection.. need to be gotten rid of somehow.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...and quit spreading misinformation.
Firstly, a cyano group is simply a carbon atom bonded to a nitrogen atom with a triple bond. In the term cyanide, the ide simply identifies the CN as an ion. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is the colorless, poisonous gas that may, or may not smell like almonds. (Go ahead...smell it.)
The blue dye you are thinking about is called cyanine, which is simply the common name for 1,1-diisoamyl-4,4-cyanine iodide.
If you go here, you will see a structure of cyanine. The only nitrogen present in the chemical is firmly rooted in a benzine ring (called pyridine). It's not going anywhere, and there's certainly no cyanide.
Additionally, the other dye used in CDRs is called phthalocyanine. Structure here. As you can see, the molecule is circular and the CN groups are in rings and in bonds between the ring structures. No hydrogen cyanide will be evolved.
While this doesn't answer why CDRs smell like almonds after/while they are being burned (do they? I've never smelled that), it does cast away some of the misperceptions.
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
bartok, checked out your journal entry on kuro5hin - in answer to your question there - bitter almonds are just another variety of almond - with a bit more cyanide than the 'sweet' variety.
you know, being able to smell cyanide is a genetic trait, and that bodies of people poisoned by it smell like bitter almond.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
I'd always avoided mixing green and blue on my monitor because I know you can make cyanide from those two colours....
Bazman
You can smell HCN when you sniff at the bottle with cyanide or cyanoborohydride - it is a bitter, nasty, almnost pyridine-like stink. Sure, cyanide is in bitter almonds and peach inner seeds, it makes part of their flavour.
What you smell is the common almond-food flavor (Dr.Pepper flavor)- benzaldehyde, most likely. They add this stuff into some furniture polish, too.
The other possible, very similar almond-smelling substances are nitrobenzene (poisonous) and benzonitrile.
I think it is some kind of solvent/paint additive which they use for printing the label on the CD, definitely not anything essential for the CD manufacture.
[And, cyanin is a non volatile dye and has nothing to do with cyanide - the name is similar because of the greek word cyanos=blue]
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
I can imagine hundreds of Slashdot readers surreptiously sniffing their CD-Rs at work, little knowing that their bosses have just stepped up behind them.
boss: What the hell are you doing?!?!
SDR: Ummm..Err..Uh..Quality control.
boss: Oh...Very well. Carry on then.
I was just about to post an Ask Slashdot about a bag of nuts that I got last night that smelled like freshly burnt CD-R's.
If it ain't a Model M, it's a piece of crap.
I read something awhile back about the almond scent of cyanide. Apparently, only women can smell it, but not all women, only like 50% or so.
Weird.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
No, I've actually wondered the same thing myself for a while (though it's possible that Taco thought it was bogus and would be a great post to use as April 1 material).
When I open a new, shrinkwrapped (and therefore sealed) spindle of CDs, most brands have a strong smell that is very similar to that of almonds. It goes away if you leave the thing open for a while, but if you seal a spindle for a while, you can smell it a bit when you open it later. (Presumably, the scent is coming from some sort of decomposition going on in the CD, then, rather than just gas from the manufacturing process). I usually a use a variety of generic not-very-intense blue CDRs. I don't remember smelling almonds with the old gold CDRs I used to use, though it's possible that I just didn't notice. I've certainly never noticed it with silver pressed audio CDs. My CDRs are kept in clear spindles (in sunlight) -- I vaguely remember that sunlight tended to have some sort of impact on CDRs, so it may be that it simply doesn't affect people who keep them in those black binders.
I also remembered the "cyanide smells like almonds" tidbit, and wondered if that might have something to do with it, but some chem people here have said that phalocyanine (or whatever the stuff is) is quite different and doesn't have an odor.
But, yes, I can vouch that this is definitely fact, not an April 1 joke.
May we never see th
It smells like victory.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
What brands of CD's have you noticed this odour in. I have a bunch of "Princo" CD's that have a distinct chemical smell, which could be said to be similar to almonds I suppose.
"I have let serveral farts of various loudness at home and work, and some of them have a very strong dead animal odour when expelled. Does anyone know what causes that? I know that crap has a distinctive dead animal odour, but so does a range of other organic chemicals. Can any Slashdot readers with a chemistry background enlighten us as to the possible source of the smell?"
Ok, Now post this as a---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I would hate to be the quality assurance person on the almond domestication project.
blah blah blah
I believe you have to extract the cyanide from bitter almonds, or at least de-plenish it in some form.
Most bitter almond extract actually has more scary stuff in it - the gooey inner pits from apricots. Which also has cyanide in it. I guess that makes my favorite dessert something like fugu...
At least we're not taste-testers for the ricin factory...
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
coconuts seroiusly.. kinda like tanning lotion or a nice massage oil. For a romantic night i just open up a fresh spindle and light some candles, then do some cd burning...
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
My linksys router smells like peanut butter, I always figured it was due to the funky plastics. None of my other equipment has a food-like smell.
I've had regular discs smell like this before I started getting cdrs. It's the colored paint on the top of the cd that you smell and some different color paints smell differently.
No he is not kidding. I also have 4 spindles of Memorex cds and they smell marsipan cake (don't know if it is the right translation). I'm pretty sure it is that because i don't like marsipan cake ;)