So, does ozone have an odor or not?

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: DRIEBEN-at-midsouth.rr-dot-com 

Hi all,

I always thought that O3 had a sharp, almost "sweet" odor to it. I assumed 
that
this sweet odor that always showed up just about as soon as I turned on any
of my lower powered NST coils was ozone. Now we seem to have controversial
ideas as to whether the odor that we smell when playing with our wonderful
spark throwers is ozone or nitrogen oxides (NO).

It was mentioned by someone that the higher powered coils don't produce
near as much ozone (or whatever produces that sharp sweet smell) as do the
smaller ones and I, for one, have indeed noticed this effect. I think that
it was Bert Hickman who stated that the higher powered coils are better at
producing the NO because it takes more energy (heat) to produce NO but takes
less to produce O3 from O2. This would seem to lend credence to the "ozone
has a smell" school of thought, IMHO. Also, Adam (Yurtle Turtle) Menchey
stated that they produce O3 where he works from pure O2 and that the O3
they produce does indeed have this sharp odor. BTW, I've noticed the
"odor factor" is very low when operating a high powered (pig) coil and
I can run it in a poorly ventilated room  for several minutes at a time
w/out any noticable adverse resperatory effects (or odor). OTH, the strong
odor quickly becomes overpowering when operating a small NST coil in the same
poorly ventilated room and if I don't cease the coil operation and get
to fresh air pretty quickly, I will suffer asthma-like resperatory pro-
blems that will take up to an hour to clear up once they're initiated,
even after moving to fresh air. It's quite apparent that this gas could
reach suffocating proportions in a fairly quick order, if one was not
careful!

So, is it really O3 (ozone) that we're smelling or is it NO(). BTW,
if I'm not mistaken, nitrous oxide, that is used as an anasthetic and
as an aspiration additive for internal combustion gaslonie engines'
air intake manifolds to greatly increase the fuel consumptiom po-
tential and therefore, greatly increase the output horsepower, is odor-
less. I'm not sure if this nitrous oxide is the same NO compound(s)
that our sprking TCs are producing, but it is a thought.

It seems to me that it is the ozone that we're smelling, not the NO.
BTW, does NO have the same detrimental effects to health at such low
concentrations as does ozone? Like I said, doctors and dentists often
deliberately make us breath nitorus oxide (some call it laughing gas)
to put us out so they can operate on us w/out us feeling the pain.
This form of NO must not be very toxic at all or it certainly couldn't
be used so freely as an anesthetic. Maybe some of the resident chemistry
majors could comment further on this subject?

David Rieben

----- Original Message -----
From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Thursday, December 25, 2003 10:06 am
Subject: Re: new single 833A VTTC

 > Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>
 >
 > "Original poster: "Jim Mitchell" <electrontube-at-sbcglobal-dot-net>
 >
 > I posted a description of ozone from a dictionary,  and it says
 > clearlythat
 > ozone has a distinc smell, and it is even named for its smell, and
 > it is
 > a
 > common misconception when ozone is mistaken for various nitrous
 > oxides.
 > "
 >
 > 	Or the reverse.  In the case of coiler's, I think the smell
 > attributedto ozone is often that of the nitrogen oxides.  To me
 > ozone has a
 > different, somewhat "warm" small.
 >
 > Ed
 >
 >
 >