Ammonia has been used by doctors, farmers, chemists, alchemists, weightlifters, and our families since Roman times. Doctors revive unconscious patients, farmers use it in fertilizer, alchemists tried to use it to make gold, weightlifters sniff it into their lungs to invigorate their respiratory system and clear their heads prior to lifting tremendous loads. At home, ammonia is used to clean up the ketchup you spilled on the floor and never cleaned up.

The ammonia molecule (NH₃) is a colorless gas with a strong odor – it’s the smell of freshly cleaned floors and windows. Mom is not cleaning with straight ammonia (it’s gas at room temperature because it boils at -28^oF, so the stuff she cleans with is actually ammonium hydroxide, a solution of ammonia and water).  Ammonia is found when plans and animals decompose, and it’s also in rainwater, volcanoes, your kidneys (to neutralize excess acid), in the ocean, some fertilizers, in  Jupiter’s lower cloud decks, and trace amounts are found in our own atmosphere (it’s lighter than air).

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