For people and much other life on Earth, the most important thing it does is to block almost all of the UV (UV is light that’s bluer than blue) coming from the Sun. A little UV still gets through, and causes sunburn and skin cancer — imagine how bad it would be if there were no ozone layer!
It’s amazing how effective the “ozone layer” is, given how little ozone there is: if you put all the ozone together in one layer (it’s actually spread out a bit) on the surface of the Earth it would only be about three millimetre thick!
Ozone is a special form of oxygen made up of 3 oxygen atoms rather than 2. It forms as UV radiation from the sun is absorbed by the layer of the atmosphere around the earth called the stratosphere. This thin layer of ozone functions to protect life on earth from those damaging rays from the sun.
CFC chemicals have damaged part of that ozone layer which is why people talk about the hole in the ozone layer, and that’s why we need to be super careful about skin cancer – because this hole lets more harmful UV rays through to earth.
Hi wolflover99,
For people and much other life on Earth, the most important thing it does is to block almost all of the UV (UV is light that’s bluer than blue) coming from the Sun. A little UV still gets through, and causes sunburn and skin cancer — imagine how bad it would be if there were no ozone layer!
It’s amazing how effective the “ozone layer” is, given how little ozone there is: if you put all the ozone together in one layer (it’s actually spread out a bit) on the surface of the Earth it would only be about three millimetre thick!
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Hello wolflover99!
Ozone is a special form of oxygen made up of 3 oxygen atoms rather than 2. It forms as UV radiation from the sun is absorbed by the layer of the atmosphere around the earth called the stratosphere. This thin layer of ozone functions to protect life on earth from those damaging rays from the sun.
CFC chemicals have damaged part of that ozone layer which is why people talk about the hole in the ozone layer, and that’s why we need to be super careful about skin cancer – because this hole lets more harmful UV rays through to earth.
0