This morning as I cooked bacon for breakfast, I was transported back in time. No, I don’t have a cool time machine stove. The smell of the bacon frying sent me back to 1996, to a hotel room at The Sun Viking Lodge in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Every few years my grandparents would take the entire extended family down to Florida for a week in the summer. The five of us kids would spend the days building sand castles, jumping over the ocean waves, and speeding down the hotel’s water slide. It seems like the smells of saltwater, chlorine, and sunscreen should be the ones associated with our trips, but it is bacon that triggers those sweet memories.

So where does the bacon fit in? Every morning, we would head down to my grandparents’ hotel room where they would already be frying up massive amounts of bacon to feed 13 people. I have no idea what else we had for breakfast, but I know that bacon was always the main attraction! Plates lined with paper towels, holding mountains of unlimited bacon were passed around as people perched on beds, balcony chairs, and at the kitchen table. The popping sounds of bacon were accompanied by 20 different conversations. With our bellies full, it was time to head out for a few hours of fun.

When we needed a break from the sun and our stomachs were grumbling, it was back into the hotel, up the elevator, and into our grandparents’ room for lunch. Opening the door, we were met with the smell of bacon. No, it wasn’t just still lingering from breakfast. We were having BLT’s for lunch. I have no idea why we always ate so much bacon on these trips. Of course, I have enjoyed bacon and the smell of it in many different places over the years, but no matter if I am in my kitchen in Michigan, at a restaurant, or at a friend’s bacon-themed party, the savory scent always takes me back to those carefree days in Daytona Beach.

Though 1996 isn’t very long ago in the scope of history, this realization I had while frying bacon makes me think about the role of our 5 senses in the school setting, and in connection to history. Science has informed us that smells really are linked to our memories and emotions, thanks to the anatomy of our brains.

So how can smell impact students in the classroom, or the study of history? Maybe a certain classroom has a distinct scent – I can still imagine the smell of my middle school art classroom that was a kind of mix of old paper and acrylic paint. Catching a whiff of those smells takes me back to learning to draw in perspective and reminds me of my fun and caring art teacher. We could even get really creative and plan a sensory experience into a lesson. I can imagine myself teaching about 1950s American culture in my US History class and I could dig out my great aunt’s old party dresses from my childhood dress up trunk – they certainly have a unique smell of faint floral perfume and mothballs. For some kids, that could really stick in their memories and coming across that smell again later could remind them of what they learned about the baby boom and growth of suburbs. When I was an intern at the Alaska Museum of Science and Nature, I used “fossil dough” made from coffee grounds for students to press leaves, shells, etc. into to make their own fossils. Perhaps some of them still think about their trip to the museum and the science of fossils when they smell coffee (I know I do!)

This may seem a little far-fetched, but the science is there to support the strong tie between smell and memory, and my bacon experience is just one example of this.