Since I am a total geek, and find myself interested in such things I do know what ozone smells like. However as a friend just pointed out itis not any easy odor to describe. Any time you get a lot of arcing and sparking you get ozone. It is a very distinctive yet subtle odor butit doesn’t really seem to have very many good parallels in everyday life. If you have ever serviced anything electromechanical in nature, like a 1960 pinball machine, all the arcing and sparking of the relays and stepper switches make ozone. So, if you discount the smell of old transformer and baked relay coils, when a pinball machine is operating you can smell ozone on the inside. I know that doesn’t help much if you have never opened an old pinball machine.

Laser printers make a little ozone. You can kinda smell it when you open the printer to clear a paper jam but the odor of melted toner and the “heat” smell tend to mask it if you don’t already know what ozone smells like.

Arc welding makes ozone so you can kinda smell it there. But again the “metal” smell gets in there too so it is hard to detect if you don’t already know that to look for.

Sewing machines make an ozone smell because of the arcing of the brushes in the little motor. I think that it probably the best real life example I can think of.

To describe the smell of ozone the best I can do is something like this: You know how a camp fire smells when the rain puts it out – the smell of fresh wet ashes. New lessen that smell by about half, then couple that with a an extremely slight odor of gasoline and you get something close to the smell of ozone.

Hope that helps…

Till next time.

R.

PS: I got to thinking more about the smell of ozone and came up with two things that produce that odor without other smells mixed in: slot cars and model trains (especially the old Lionel trains). The ozone smell comes from the arcing of the brushes or wheels on the track as the cars or train go around the track.