Smell

So I'm smelling a pencil. Wood, paint, graphite, paint and steel. If I'm smelling something, doesn't that mean that tiny bits of the pencil are breaking off and contacting my smell receptors? Does that mean that if this pencil sat undisturbed long enough that it would eventually off-gas into nothing?

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I would think so, but there are other smells that also factor in as
well. You can get a pretty good approximation of what it smells like.

when u smell something ur drawing in tiny bits of the object with the motion of the air entering ur nose, like absorbing very tiny bits of that object. so yes, if you smell some object for long enough, it will eventually vanish.

Maybe there's a point where the molecules that make up the pencil aren't so loose and they stop flying off...and the pencil stops emitting scent?

>steel
A pencil's ferrule is made out of aluminum.

Ok, aluminum then.

Nobody knows for sure?

Does everything eventually crumble into its basic forms eventually? What about fossils?

So, I'm a geologist. As a geologist i know that there's no such thing as a solid. Sure, chemically there's a phase change between a liquid and what we call a solid but I'm talking about the concept of a 'solid'.

In geological time EVERYTHING is in constant motion all the time. I would imagine that your pencil will lose molecules to the atmosphere until the atmosphere is saturated and at equilibrium. If you had infinite atmosphere and time yes, it will eventually be completely absorbed into the atmosphere

Metals in general aren't very volatile, so you're not smelling the actual metals but products of their reactions with the environment.
Read this for example chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/7916/why-can-we-smell-copper

Pure gold is the only thing that will hold its form if left undisturbed for millennia. All other things would eventually turn into oxides or decay into elemental dust.

haven't you ever heard of entropy

Well, i don't know about there not being any more scents but taking your question to the extreme, if there is proton decay, then all matter that we know of today will eventually decompose into subatomic particles and if there isn't, all matter will become iron which will become black holes which will then become subatomic particles. In short, with our current understanding of physics, yes everything will decay into basic subatomic particles.

I think theres some speculation on how we smell. Some think its like molecules fitting into puzzle piece receptors, others think theres some sort of quantum property that our sense of smell uses.

G-protein coupled receptors

How long would it take a pencil at room temperature, assume normal indoor environment, to turn to dust?

Smelly stuff eventually stops smelling once all the chemicals that can go into the air are gone.

Most things.
Some things keep evaporating until nothing is left. Naphthalene (mothballs) or Camphor.

Gold's not unique. Things that are already oxidized are permanent if left alone. Most rocks are like that. Easy to find rocks that are, not just millennia, but millions of years old, provided they've been sheltered from erosion.
Aluminum quickly "rusts" but it's only a surface layer and the process stops there because aluminum oxide is less dense than pure aluminum. Thereafter, aluminum will sit on your shelf for millennia. (Iron crumbles because iron oxide is denser than pure iron, so the surface layer contracts, cracks and lets in oxygen and water so the process continues until its all rust.)

if you cover yourself in gold you will live forever.

About
3.50 billion

Pretty expensive though

>spending an eon to inhale a pencil

If I'm smelling something, doesn't that mean that tiny bits of the pencil are breaking off and contacting my smell receptors?
no you don't smell the tiny bits of pencil in your smell receptors, that's just a sign vehicle, one of a sequence that lead to the phenomena of you smelling a pencil, which exists in signs. the existence of that pencil and its smell, aswell as everything else that means something, is a result of complex semiotic processes that exit outside of the physical universe they emerge from and are represented in.

anyhow that does nothing to answer your question.
>if this pencil sat undisturbed long enough
well no. not if it was truley undisturbed.
force will make it erode shater, break, and lose its complexity overtime. a very short time if you were to snap it in half, a very long time if it were left out in radiation.
here on eath if you just left it setting microoganisms would digest it and its carbon and whatever will be put into the biosphere, and athmosphere, where it will be put into biosphere. it certianly would gas into nothing, the matter would be used for growth and taken into biomassed also its energywill be relaesed by living agents and usd to do work(live) the carbon and whatnot will be respired out, going on and on, it may get lost under sediment or somewhere else out of reach of Life.

Am I inhaling shit particles every time I go to a restroom?

woah haha sick wow those are some big words and I'm sure you know exactly what they all mean. I shouldn't be mocking you though, I'm glad you found a thread you were able to contribute to, even if it is about how long it would take to destroy an object using smell

Indeed. The toothbrush sitting in your bathroom also gets coated with sharticles.

When you smell farts you are actually inhaling small particles of shit

I'm simply too intelligent. what is shallow to you, in my enlightened umwelten is signification and scaffolding for an ever evolving perplexity that I am more than willing to get pedantic wit. I can find more value in a look than you will find in your lifetime. grovel before my superior intellect, for I am your meaning messiah.

Its made out of graphite you massive faggot