{"id":107,"date":"2004-05-31T21:16:40","date_gmt":"2004-05-31T12:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/05\/31\/the-smell-before-the-storm\/"},"modified":"2005-07-14T00:08:27","modified_gmt":"2005-07-13T15:08:27","slug":"the-smell-before-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/05\/31\/the-smell-before-the-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Smell Before the Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p\/>I still remember one of the last <i>Discovery Channel<\/i>-style epiphany that occurred to me before I overdosed on Physics and the mere mention of the word started sending me into irrepressible fits of maniacal laughter:<\/p>\n<p\/>While studying the effect of high-voltage electrical current on molecular geometry, our professor mentioned in passing that this was, in essence, what happened in the skies before (and during) your typical thunderstorm: oxygen molecules (O<sub><small>2<\/small><\/sub>) would get dissociated into unstable atomic oxygen that would recombine with more O<sub><small>2<\/small><\/sub> to make ozone (O<sub><small>3<\/small><\/sub>). Ozone being much more dense than molecular oxygen then proceeds to fall straight to the ground where it reaches the unsuspecting layman&#8217;s nostrils.<\/p>\n<p\/>So that lovely and unique smell that fills the air just before a Summer storm like right now is the smell of <i>ozone<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Science is, indeed, a wonderful thing.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>Update:<\/b> Scott&#8217;s insightful contribution and some more amusing scientific facts about Ozone, in the comment section.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s that characteristic smell before the storm?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insignificant-details"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}