The molecules definitely have different ‘weights’. However, all of these molecules must be fairly “light” – right? – or instead of floating on air currents, they would just fall to the floor.
So, the first issue is how does stuff become “airborne” – you can have something which sublimates directly from solid to gas (like dry ice) or you can have a liquid which vaporizes (aka volatiles) like water (which slowly evaporates at room temperature) or alcohol (which evaporates much much faster.)
And the faster something evaporates (more volatile) the more likely it is to have a noticeable odor. Water has a very indistinct odor; alcohol is much more recognizable because it is more volatile.
Dissolving pheromone crystals in perfumer’s alcohol and spraying, you get a very very fine dispersion of molecules on the surface of the skin. You have alcohol evaporating – molecules jumping off of the skin, into the air – and encouraging other molecules to jump, too.
You know that adage about how every perfume or cologne is different on different people? Consider that sweat itself, like water, has almost no distinct aroma. But decaying bacteria in sweat is highly personalized and varies with age, diet, health, mood, etc.
So try spraying some perfumer’s alcohol into a sweaty and stinky armpit. No perfume, just the alcohol. And as the alcohol evaporates, it will help the stinky pit odor molecules to jump off your body and diffuse into a larger and more intensely aromatic cloud around you. What might have been smelled at intensity X only an inch from your armpit might now be 3X intensity from three feet away.
Where all this leads me is to this conclusion:
No, even the motion of picking up the spray bottle should, along with normal molecular activity, keep the solution in the bottle mixed fairly evenly. Let it sit someplace undisturbed for a year or so, and maybe there will be some “fractionation” of the molecules, with the heavier sitting on the bottom. But maybe it would take five years, or ten.
Yes, the molecules you spray in the mix will jump off your body at different rates. My experience tells me that Instant Shine has a much shorter half-life (see below) than A314. I’d love to get people’s estimates of the half-life of various pheros.
Phero Half-Life
Here’s a thought experiment: If I apply five sprays of 20 mcg/spray phero (=100 mcg total) to my … neck … at time = 0:00 … and I somehow am able to measure the “instantaneous evaporation rate” (IER) of my pheros … perhaps just after applying my IER is … suppose it is evaporating at 25 nanograms per second.
At a constant 25 nanograms per second IER, my 100 mcg (= 100,000 nanograms) will totally evaporate in about 67 minutes. (100,000/25 = 4,000; 3600 seconds = 1 hour)
But I say the rate of evaporation is not constant in reality. Sure, things like my body temperature and how windy it is make a difference, but at the beginning I have 100,000 nanograms of phero on my neck, and some time later I have only 50,000 nanos. The more I have to evaporate (at the beginning) the more ~will~ evaporate at that moment in time; later, when I have less left on my neck, fewer molecules will be evaporating.
So, let’s assume that I wait ten minutes for “drydown” … which means that the alcohol that we sprayed with the phero is mostly done evaporating. Let’s call time = 0:10 our benchmark, T(1), and at T(1) my at-rest rate of phero evaporation is IER=X. Some time later, at T(2), my at-rest rate of phero evaporation is IER=X/2.
The difference between T(2) and T(1) is what I am calling the Half Life of a particular phero. It’s how long, excluding initial dry-down, it takes before the effective diffusion of the phero is 1/2 of what it was just after dry down.
Based on my experience, I’d estimate the half-life of various pheros as follows:
Instant Shine: 90 minutes
Alpha-Androstenol: 2 hours
Beta-Androstenol: 2-3 hours
Androstanone: 3 hours
Androstadienone: 4 hours
A314: 5 hours
Androstenone: 8 hours
Note that the times above are HALF life, not useful life. For example, I detect lingering effects of Instant Shine for as long as 3-5 hours after initial dry down, but effects have been much less intense after about 90 minutes.
Half-lives can be linked together – applying this guideline to Instant Shine, it would suggest (using my estimate) that 90 minutes after dry-down, the IS application is now 50% as “effective”, and that after another 90 minutes (assuming the half-life is constant) the original IS application is now about 25% as “effective”, and after about four and one-half hours that would drop to about 12.5% of the original level of activity.
If the half-life of -none is eight hours, then 4 sprays of TUTH at time=T will still be delivering the punch of 1 freshly applied spray 24 hours later.
