What Is the Ozone Hype Anyway?

What Is the Ozone Hype Anyway?

“The ozone is a pale bluish form of oxygen gas with an odor like chlorine, formed by an electrical discharge in the air” (Webster 185).

The first time that I thought about this research narrative was the first time that I read the syllabus for class. My immediate reaction was that I could not believe that we were actually going to write a ten-page narrative. I was never expected to write a paper of this length before and I was unsure if I were going to be able to do so. However, it turned out that it was not that bad, although I did go through many frustrations along the way.

First, I had to come up with a topic. I think that this was the hardest part. In our class, we used one of our textbooks to help with this part of the process for our papers. In exercise 1.1, Ballenger suggests that you make a list under a number of different topics (23). Therefore, I made a list of at least twenty things under each topic that I thought might be a possible topic for my paper. My list ranged from pets all the way to relationships and back to health problems. However, after talking to my professor and my friends, and taking Ballenger’s advice on how to eliminate topics, I decided to go with the ozone layer (25). I had a few different reasons for making this choice. One of them was that this was something that I did not know very much about. In addition, the topic was something that I did want to know more about. Consequently, due to the fact that I did not know much, I would not do my research with a bias and more importantly, I would do the research well because I wanted to know more.

Next, I had to come up with a question that I wanted to know the answer to. Again, Ballenger came with help. In exercise 2.1, Ballenger suggests that you make a list of questions and then have peers add questions also. During this process, I went through so many questions. Why was the ozone layer depleting? What could we do to help? How long has this been going on?