A friend and I were discussing the fact that, when cooking in my house, the smells are most detectable at the top of the stairs going up to the second floor (in US parlance - believe it's called the first floor in UK?), rather than right next to the stove or elsewhere in the kitchen.

If this were a question of sounds being most detectable in a certain spot, we would talk about the acoustics of the space. What does one call it when it relates to smell?

Didn't find anything in my dictionary at my desk, but did learn that there is such a thing (or at least such a word, and presumably the thing to go with it) as an olfactometer.

Hyla