Can You Describe the Smell of Ammonia to Me?

[symbolipoint]

Just go to the store and buy some glass cleaner and take a whiff. Then go clean your windows and mirrors.

That depends on the formulation. Some glass cleaners have ammonia. Some glass cleaners have isopropanol. some glass cleaners have both ammonia and isopropanol. A few glass cleaners have neither but instead something else. Often enough the product label has an ingredients list. If what is shown is what you are looking for, decide if this sampling would be the choice.

 

[thetrellan]

I am not sure what it smells like and am wondering if someone can describe it to me.

The reason I ask is I am wondering if I have a mouse or rat in the home that is urinating on my clothes. I have read that the mouse/rat urine would smell like ammonia. Thanks!

Ammonia smells like urine. I've known this for decades. You don't need a black light, and in any case how would you tell the difference between different biological traces left around the house? Mostly food traces, I imagine.

 

[hmmm27]

Ammonia smells like urine. I've known this for decades. You don't need a black light, and in any case how would you tell the difference between different biological traces left around the house? Mostly food traces, I imagine.

Fresh urine doesn't usually particularly smell of ammonia. A decent UV flashlight can save you weeks of putting your nose right up to the wall to find out exactly where the cat peed a couple of weeks ago.

 

[sysprog]

The 146 "perceptual descriptors" in Andrew Dravnieks' 1985 "Atlas of Odor Character Profiles" are listed in the paper The structure of human olfactory space by Alexei A. Koulakov, Armen G. Enikolopov, and Dmitry Rinberg. Ammonia is descriptor #108 (an interesting number: $108=1^1 \times 2^2 \times 3^3$).

As @hmmm27 pointed out, it smells like glass cleaner $-$ that's because glass cleaner is (usually) diluted ammonia $-$ it evaporates completely without residue.

Undiluted ammonia is very noxious, and strongly insults the respiratory tract if inhaled $-$ if you want to smell it, open a bottle, and wave your hand laterally above the top to waft a little of it.