THE OZONE LAYER
Everyone always hears about the depleting ozone layer on the news or reads about different stories in science literature or on the Internet. However, did you ever wonder what the ozone layers actually was or what it does to protect planet earth and us? Did you ever wonder how the Ozone layer was formed? Until researching for this paper, I knew that it was not a good thing that the Ozone layer was depleting, but it was important it is that we work together reduce the amount of harmful chemicals and gases, which we release into the atmosphere, which depletes this protective layer. However, I was clueless and wanted to gain more knowledge about the formation of the ozone layer, what is does to protect our planet, and why we should be bothered about doing anything to protect the depleting layer.
The formation of the ozone layer occurred over a billion years ago, when blue-green algae began using energy from the Sun to split molecules of H2O and CO2 combined them into organic compounds and molecular oxygen (O2).
English: NASA projection from 1974 to 2060 of the ...
Ozone-depleting gas trends.
Lowest value of ozone measured by TOMS each year i...Everyone knows the process and conversion of solar energy as Photosynthesis. Some of the photo synthetically created oxygen is combined with the organic carbon to recreate CO2 molecules. This remaining oxygen, which has accumulated in the atmosphere, produces a massive ecological disaster to early existing anaerobic organisms. As oxygen in the atmosphere increased, the amount of CO2 decreased (Source 1). Ozone is created in the stratosphere when UV radiation from the Sun strikes molecules of oxygen (O2) and causes the two oxygen atoms to split apart. If a freed atom bumps into another O2, it joins up, forming ozone (O3). This process is known as photolysis (Source 2). It makes up a thin layer of ozone, which surrounds Earth...