Ammonia

Ammonia, or NH3, to give it it's chemical formula, is a weak electrolyte and a covalent molecular compound, and I would draw an electron dot diagram save for the fact that Google Blogs does not allow me to do this.
Ah, what a nerd I am.
I have two reasons for dedicating a post to ammonia.
Reason Number the First: It STINKS. It reeks to high Heaven, truly it does. You know when you have a cold, and you go to breathe in through your clogged-up nose, and there's a weird feeling/smell thing right at the tail-end of your breath in? That's what ammonia is like. It's not a very pleasant smell, and you get it right at the end of your breath in. It is also toxic, in that if you breathe too much of it, it displaces all the air in your lungs.
Nice.
The reason I know that it reeketh is because we were housesitting for my grandparents for six weeks while they travelled all over Europe, and as we currently do not own a house, this was a great opportunity. However, on the last week of our staying there, we noticed an odd smell coming from the laundry. I thought nothing of it, save that I might have had a cold, or a blocked nose, and that's what it was. My father thought it was a problem with him, too. My mother was the one who opened the cupboard in which a bottle of cloudy ammonia, used for cleaning stains, previously was, to be hit in the face by the overpowering stench of ammonia. When I say the bottle previously was in the cupboard, I mean that it was in bottle-shaped form. Because it was SO DAMN COLD in that house over the past few weeks, the plastic bottle had shrunk, cracked, and perished, spilling ammonia everywhere. Needless to say we opened the house up, then, as we were running severely late for something we were hosting, closed it back up again, then left for the fresh air, feeling slightly headachey and out-of-breath.
The ammonia dissipated, and we're all fine, having breathed it all out and got some good clean air.
Reason Number the Second: It's very cool, in a nerdish way. It is a covalent compound that is also a weak electrolyte, a rare occurrence. This means it ionises partly when dissolved in water, making some ions and some bits remaining neutral NH3 molecules. But what ions does it make? N and H ions? That would be odd. So what does happen?
Here's the nerdishly cool bit.
It rips apart the water molecules to make NH4+ ions and OH- ions. This is the only thing I know of that actually rips apart the damn water, as opposed to itself being dissolved by the water. This is very very awesome to a chemistry nerd like myself. Because it Rips. Apart. The Water.
How cool is that?

So I think I'll wind up my monologue on ammonia. Got any ammonia tales yourself? Leave a comment! (Although I don't actually expect this to happen - no-freakin'-body gives a damn about this blog and probably never will.)
Also, the smell of ammonia is nothing at all like the scent of petrichor.
Which, by the way, was on the list of the 100 most beautiful words. Yeah. (But "melancholy" wasn't, which surprised me - I have a fondness for that word, and think it is deserving of a place.)
Anyway.
Fare thee well!