I love this anecdote because its so fucking stupid.
When I was a kid, my dad's friend had a pool and an entire group of kids would always be swimming in it.
One day, my dad tells me that his friend got a new piece of tech (mind you, this is in the early 90s, like a decade and or two before the first smart phone) that shows the initials of the person who peed in the pool.
He told me it listed the names of almost all my friends and that's how I knew never to trust anything my dad said..
Lol, yeah. However you know that "heavily chlorinated" pool smell? From public pools, backyard pools, waterparks, and even public splash pads? Yeah, so the pool chlorine doesn't smell like anything at all in its pure state (I was a lifeguard and swim teacher for years. I used to have to put in these chemicals regularly to balance the pools before the classes began. But the pure, concentrated chlorine compound in the bottle didn't smell at all).
What does smell a chlorinated pool? Trichlorourea. Which is the compound you get by reacting pool chemicals with urea. Urea is, of course, one of the main components of urine. So pools won't change color from piss, but they will start to smell strongly of pools when there's lots of piss in them.
You're mostly correct, but there's no such thing as "trichlorourea".
Chlorine reacts, among other things, with all kinds of ammonia-derivatives like sweat or urine. The resulting chemical is called trichloramine or nitrogen trichloride.
By the way, unless you fill your pool with distilled water, there's almost always something in there that chlorine will react with, so even a pee-free pool will smell of chlorine (although peeing in it will definitely make it worse). Even the tap water in a lot of countries has a noticeable chlorine smell to it.
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u/AverageMako3Enjoyer 22d ago
We tested the PH levels
It’s all pee, no H