Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Does anyone know any atmospheric chemists around San Jose that could help me out with my project?

Are fastplants a good test subject for my project, and work just as well as an actual agriculturally important crop like cabbage?

All this started as a pursuit of a question, which over time became more complicated and is now: How much would ground level ozone affect biomass in a vital crop of southern Africa/Thailand (where ground level ozone is relatively high, though not as high as LA, of course.), and how big would the difference be in the amount of people able to be sustained now as opposed to with no photochemical smog at all?
Ground level ozone is ozone in the troposphere (the stuff you breath), not the stratosphere. In the stratosphere, it protects us from sun cancer. In the troposphere, it kills us in high concentrations, but usually makes you cough, wheeze, and just overall have a bad day, unless you have asthma, then you have a very bad day at 0.14ppm ozone. It is produced in urban areas where Nitrogen oxides and VOCs react. But the crops are grown in rural areas, right? Well, photochemical smog drifts. 1 million $$ annual damage in LA area.
I wanted to experiment with growing plants exposed to ozone.

hey orange

i dont know any scientists in the san jose area..sory about that..butthere are many different ways to do your project...you can research the average amount of ozone in a certain number of thousand feet but make sure you keep you measurement standard...and also measure the ozone at four to five feet of the ground and make sure you know how far abouve you are from sea level

i would suggest using pea plants as they are quick growing and do fairly well in most all science projects.
out of curiosity how much space do you have for this project? you might want to consider trying to create a controlled enviroment in something like a tank unless you are trying to do this on a much larger scale