Laughing gas, which is also known as dinitrogen monoxide, one of several oxides of nitrogen, is a colourless gas. However, it has a pleasant and sweetish odour and taste. When inhaled, it produces insensibility to pain preceded by mild hysteria, sametimes laughter. Nitrous oxide was discovered by the English chemist Joseph Priestley in 1772; another English chemist, Humphery Davy, later named it nitrous oxide and showed its physiological effect. The principal use of nitrous oxide is as an anaesthetic in surgical operations of short duration; prolonged inhalation causes death. The gas is also used as a propellant in food aerosols. It is prepared by the action of zinc on dillute nitric acid by the action of hydroxylamine hydrochloride on sodium nitrite and,
most commonly, by the decomposition of ammonium nitrate.
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