Ozone plays a significant role in the troposphere by oxidizing many organic compounds.
While reactions between O 3 and saturated hydrocarbons are very slow, reactions between O 3 and unsaturated hydrocarbons are sometimes fast enough to be atmospherically significant. The rate of reaction is measured spectrophotometrically by monitoring the decay of the very strong O 3 absorbance at 254 nm. A simple reaction cell is described that makes it possible to perform all necessary measurements with a standard UV-vis spectrophotometer. All rights reserved.