Questions about the ozone layer

Reading about ozone and the ozone layer in Wikipedia and other sources left a lot of questions to answer. So I ventured a bit farther in the field and gathered enough data about electromagnetic radiation (EMR), the properties of photons end the interaction between electrons and photons, especially in gases. My questions were not answerd by this, but I can formulate them more precisely,so here we go.Just a few for starters.

1. About ozone in the atmosphere. Above the region where the ozone layer is situated a lot of air is found and of course enough EMR with frequenties of UV or higher. So why no ozone is found there?

2. Ozone concentrations of up to 10 parts per million occur in the ozone layer, according to ENCARTA. O2 concentrations in the atmosphere is about 2 parts per 10 or 200.000 parts per million. So for every mol O3 ther are 20.000 mol O2. Why are there so few ozone molecules while there is EMR and O2 enough to produce a lot more ozone ?

F.pakker 15:31, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• 1: Maybe because ozone formation is slow? See ionosphere and you'll see various gases are energized above. Note the high temperatures reached up there. Above a certain point one gets oxygen plasma instead of ozone. (SEWilco 04:58, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• 2: Ozone-oxygen cycle observes the formation rate of ozone is limited by the UV energy. (SEWilco 05:00, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC))

This page needs substantive revision

This page contained a number of scientifically incorrect statements. I've just corrected these, but I think the page could use a more substantive rewrite, focussing on the basic physics and chemistry of the ozone layer instead of on ozone depletion, since the latter subject has a page of its own.

--Rparson 22:04, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Much better now

Nice job, William and SEWilco. I just deleted some of my old text which has been made redundant by your additions. I think there are other redundancies that could be cleaned up over time. Also, I suggest moving the figure at the head of Amount of Ozone down to Ozone depletion, where it is more relevant. --Rparson 11:13, 14 Apr 2005

(William M. Connolley 20:35, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)) Would be fine by me. Its probably best to just do things like that, and back off if anyone complains, which in this case is unlikely.

I think the figure showing "ozone amount" belongs with "Amount of Ozone". "Ozone depletion" can use improvement, but without sucking in all of the main article on the topic. (SEWilco 05:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC))