Re: i'm dreaming of a black christmas

Dear Robin Fairbairns:

On Dec 24, 3:58 pm, r...@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Robin Fairbairns) wrote:
 Stephen <stephenbow...@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
On 24 Dec 2007 21:39:16 GMT, r...@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Robin Fairbairns)
wrote:

[*] this is silly: ozone is a colourless odourless gas

In liquid form it is blue. It is *very* pungent.

(this is the chemist's equivalent of the mathematician's
light inextensible string).

Are you sure that it's odourless?  Only its name derives
from a Greek word meaning, um, "odour" (ozein), and the
smell that I associate with electrical discharges has
always been explained to me as that of ozone.

Could also be NOx. Depends on the humidity in the air.

i'm not sure: it's an awful long time since i used to read
that sort of book in bed.  and ozone's not something you
want to experiment with in a 6th-form chemistry lab (well,
not something i age 16 wanted to experiment with).  so
i've no experience of what it smells like, un-tainted with
the smell of electrical operations that it's commonly
associated with.

If nothing else is losing mass, then the constitutents of ozone must
be entirely from the feed gas. Ozone is made in pure oxygen, as well
as varying concentrations of nitrogen (from 0.5% to 70%).

it is of course poisonous,

Toxic, not poisonous. White blood cells will produce ozone to fight
infection, and you can see where this is being done by looking for
inflammation. The "miracle" of ozone is that it decays to oxygen...
leaving no residue.

and iirc sufficiently unstable that it'll explode when
liquified (not that i could have liquified it at school).

The correct term is "deflagration", and it occurs in gaseous form
also. Probably easier. I had deflgration of 12 wt% ozone launch high
voltage electrodes towards the inlet side of an ozone generator
vessel, shorting it out.

of course, the "ozone" smell you get at the seaside
isn't.  which is probably a good thing, if you're going
to the seaside for rest and recuperation.

Don't be so sure. All you need is NOx, VOC (available from the sea)
and sunlight. But you are probably smelling various bromine and
chlorine compounds (once) trapped in water droplets.

i don't doubt you've got the etymology right, but given
that almost no-one gets the smell of ozone untainted,
i wouldn't be surprised if its namers had got it wrong.

Sorry, no. I've smelled ozone from UV sources and from commercial
ozone generators making 15 wt% or higher. The smell is very strong,
and smells the same. The only thing that varies is the headache...

David A. Smith
.

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