- Used PubChem to download limonene molecule, exporting as .sdf file.
- Imported .sdf into CCDC's Free Mercury app and exported to .pdb (protein data bank file)
- Added Atomic Blender plugin to import the .pdb file and import to Blender

3/ In May, we told the story of Kris Hansen, a 3M scientist who told company executives decades ago that the forever chemicals it manufactured were in peoples’ bodies. Her bosses halted her work:

5. Research molecules and colors to understand it better
6. Figure out how to connect lighting and shaders
7. Make the whole thing in a Gist to be able to post it on Bluesky.

Technical brief:
1. Figure out WebGPU and browser based rendering pipeline first, and research Meta Quest 3 support for WebGPU
2. Get data for molecules in yellow mandarin oil
3. Download shape files for up to 10 molecules
4. Find tutorials for generating a scene and add molecules into the scene

Creative brief:
"Visualize at least 1 of each of the most common molecules in yellow mandarin oil using a shader. Figure out which molecules make the oil yellow and make a yellow shader and a clear shader. Put the scene inside a bottle and set the landing zone inside the bottle for VR"

Why Yellow Mandarin orange oil?
Reason: I was in a scent workshop and realized I have not spent enough time smelling yellow mandarin orange oil. I liked that it smelled like green oranges, was sour, and the color was almost neon yellow.

What about YouTube?

I see Loops loops.video is self-hosted option. Maybe something like Mastodon/Bluesky will happen over the spring for video content? Curious to hear other ideas!

As for the term theion - maybe there is more to the etymology of the word, and the concept of sulfur and smoke in ancient greece and how they thought about it.

This will take a while to research, so maybe it I can continue with the chemistry in the meantime.

Updates:
- There are a few sulfur compounds used in perfumery.
- Sulfur was sometimes a historical fumigant but now considered too toxic for use in residences.

In any case, I will definitely be researching this topic AND stay focused on learning more modern chemistry at the same time.

Maybe sulfur is a bigger part of aromatic history and I just didn't know it yet?

OR - from context, that _theion_ could have been a sulfuric resin, similar to a sticky stinky resin called Galbanum, which is a tiny bit swampy.

The issue is that the etymology of the word *theion* - which quick Internet search reveals was the ancient Greek word for sulfur... and in ancient greek means "divine fragrance"

Other Internet searches say burnt sulfur is very stinky and toxic.

So I will NOT be skimming through the rest of book tonight, and instead going on a deep dive about what's going on here.

(Fortunately the intro is short and there shouldn't be more curveballs like this!)

Here is my problem though: in this book, the author mentions that Odysseus in The Odyssey requests sulfur to purify his house.

Really? I am already either missing something big, or very skeptical of this translation.

In the seven or so years I have been studying perfumery, SULFUR has never come up.

I'm sure that more advanced perfumers do study or work with sulfuric plants - some aromatic plants can be little funky! In trace amounts it is probably interesting.

I would say my knowledge is a little lop-sided: mostly organic molecules, and very little about metals - though if I wanted to go down a deep rabbithole on the history of alchemy and its relationship to modern chemistry, I could.

In my perfumery studies over the years, I learned a lot more about chemistry history than is in most textbooks - along with many many deep dives. The fragrant spices, and flowers all have long long stories.

The resins and incenses are part of so much human history.