Now the time has finally come to write a script and present on graduation day for our family & friends. We have to write a script too. But that depends on how you are presenting. There are 3 choices of presenting, you can do a ted talk where you have to create a script and a slideshow to support what your saying. Or you can do an ignite where you have 12 slides that are up for 15 seconds exactly. And the last choice is a wevideo, you make a slideshow and you record your voice stating the facts and everything you have to say about your topic. I chose a ted talk because my teacher thought it would be good for me. A ted talk has to be 5 to 8 minutes long. But my classes ted talk time range would be from 6 to 10 minutes. My ted talk is 8 minutes and 50 seconds long. In a ted talk you don’t have a limited amount of slides. I have 24 slides. I have organized my script by sub questions and what sub questions connect would usually be before or after to help me link my facts.

My script:
Two summers ago, my family and I went to Nantucket where I found a cute little perfumery where you can customize your own perfume. I have always been fascinated by scents and creating concoctions. I loved being in the store because of the aromas in the air and and the experience of creating my own scent. I left the store with a small perfume vile in my bag. What surprised me the most was that this tiny little bottle was $25. And I wondered why it was so expensive, how it was actually made and where perfume came from.
The perfume industry has sales of about $40 billion globally. So smelling good is a big business and we all are willing to pay a lot to smell good! But are we really getting our money’s worth? Take for example, a $100 bottle of perfume — you will be surprised to know that the actual liquid in this bottle represents only 3% of the total cost of making the perfume and the other 97% of the cost goes into packaging and marketing. So when you are buying a bottle of perfume you are basically paying for the pretty packaging and the cute bottle. Has this always been the case?
Can you believe perfume making, in its truest form, dates back to ancient times. The Egyptians were the first to start creating scents, lotions and ointments. They used perfume for religious ceremonies, funerals and eventually daily wear.
The Islamic culture has contributed greatly to modern perfumery. In the 10th century, they were the first to extract oils from flowers through steam distillation which is a method still used today. Additionally, they had greater access to the many different herbs, spices and flowers. For example, Jasmine and roses, two of the most fragrant flowers, were native to the region.
Archaeologists discovered the first perfume factory was created about 4000 years ago in Cyprus. People in Cyprus were the first to have a factory that produced perfume. Why them? Because they had all kinds of essential oils such as coriander, bay laurel, myrtle, lavender and rosemary.
But it was really the French in the 17th century, who built an industry around perfume. In the south of France, mainly in Grasse, which is considered the world capital of perfume, is where the industry blossomed. Fields in Grasse were used to create raw materials such as lavender, myrtle, jasmine, rose, orange blossom and wild mimosa.
You might be wondering what raw ingredients are used in perfume? Well, in addition to fruits and spices, the main raw ingredients are flowers. And flowers are very costly and difficult to procure, which is why some high end luxury brands, such as Chanel and Dior, own their own flower fields.
It’s costly, for example, because it takes 750kg of jasmine flowers to create 1kg of essential oil. In France, jasmine blooms only from August to October, and must be picked by hand during the few hours of the day that the petals are open.
The rose, one of the strongest of oils, must be picked by hand at sunrise. Did you know It takes 13 tons of rose petals to create 2.2 pounds of rose oil? Also, it’s important to note that climate change is impacting the supply of flowers.
Since it’s so difficult to gather flowers and extract the oils, science has stepped in to address the problem. Chemists have revolutionized perfume by creating synthetic oils. For example instead of using essential oils from rose petals, scientists replicate the smell of rose oil by using molecules in a laboratory. So the perfumes in department stores are created not just by flowers but by synthetic molecules in the chemist’s laboratory. In fact, these synthetic oils last longer and often times smell better than the essential oils. So perfumes, today, are primarily composed of alcohol, water, and synthetic perfume oils that were created in laboratories. And I believe that because I have actually created a mini perfume bottle from synthetic oils and rubbing alcohol
So how can you tell if your perfume uses pure essentials oils versus synthetic oils? It’s very difficult because perfume companies are allowed to say just the word “fragrance” but that actually could include many synthetic molecules. If the consumer is looking for more natural ingredients, then products that usually list the essential oils are more likely to have less synthetic oils. Also, perfumes that have been certified organic, do not use synthetic oils.
You may know that perfumes are categorized by the fragrance concentration. Perfumes with a higher fragrance concentration contain more perfume and synthetic oils and less alcohol. The different categories are Parfum, Eau de Parfum, Eau de Toilette and Cologne. As you can see, Parfum has the greatest concentrate at about 25% which means its the most expensive.
Now I am going to make sense of scents. Like a song, every perfume has notes and they each contribute to the final piece. Each note is made up of different scents so when combined together they create the final smell. Each perfume is made up of top notes, heart notes and base notes. In perfumery, someone who has mastered the art of understanding notes is called a “nose”. Noses train for years to learn all the fragrances and how they change over time. They are also very good at determining top notes, heart notes and base notes and what scents mix well together. The top notes are what you smell first when you apply the perfume. The top notes fade away really quickly due to their light molecule structure. Here are the common top note scents. When the top note fades it transitions into the heart note. The heart note is the actual scent of the perfume.
It also determines the scent category it would be in. Perfume has all different kinds of scent categories. Here are the categories.
Sometimes in the heart note, spicy scents are included like cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. Common heart note scents are here. Then the base notes come into play and mix with the heart notes. These are the common base note scents. Each note by itself is not that aromatically appealing but the top note, heart note and base note together make the final scent of the perfume. For all the perfume enthusiasts in the audience feel free to smell some of the distinct scents that I have brought and you will really understand what the scent categories are.
The process of making of perfume starts with the flower crops. Flower growers send their product to factories. They put the flowers in heated metal containers. After that, the containers melt the flowers and collect only the oils from the flower or they can use another technique where they heat up the containers and take the steam of the heated flowers. While going to the next container, the oils travel through a tube and are getting cooled down. Then they arrive at the next container and the oil densities are separated and they collect all of the lighter oils and get rid of them. Finally, they would mix the oil into alcohol and water. The first perfume to be made like this was Chanel No. 5 in 1925. But when the oils are sent to a make your own perfume store, than they keep all the oils, ethanol and/or alcohol and water separate so people can do it themselves and create their own fragrance.
So, do I think perfumes should be as expensive as they are? Well, I think modern perfumes, perfumes that you find in department stores and celebrity branded perfumes, should NOT be expensive. Why? Because what I have found out is that these perfumes are highly diluted by synthetic oils, alcohol and water. And many perfumes have very little perfume concentrate. Since they are NOT primarily made up of oils from crushed flowers, the perfume makers should not charge so much money. If the perfume truly consists of a large percentage of fragrance concentrate made from flowers than YES the company can charge a high price. So, in summary, BUYER BEWARE!