Actually there are quite a few different compounds of nitrogen and oxygen. The commonest is nitrogen dioxide, a brownish gas that smells fairly awful. Nitrogen monoxide is colourless (if I remember rightly) and oxidises to the dioxide in air; this is a common biological signalling compound, involved heavily with blood pressure.AlleyCat wrote:Mostly i agree with you but nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and nitrogen dioxide are not the same thing.
One is N2O and the other is NO2 (2 nitrogens to an oxygen vs 1 Nitrogen to 2 oxygens).
Laughing gas is two nitrogens, one oxygen. It isn't all that likely to be found in car exhausts.
The "nitrous boost gas" you're most likely to find would be medical Entonox, which is a 50/50 mixture of oxygen and laughing gas. The two components naturally separate out into two different layers in storage, so cylinders of Entonox in vehicles are always stored lying flat, as opposed to stood upright, so the motion of the vehicle can give a mixing effect. This is needed in medical applications, as the idea is to administer an anaesthetic together with enhanced oxygen to the patient.
About the only other weird nitrous application I know of is, of all things, fuel for Russian submarine torpedoes. These use hydrazine as the fuel, and concentrated nitric acid as the oxidiser. When the components only mix in the engine they work great; but even the tiniest leak of either or both components can be catastrophic; it was a leaking torpedo fuel system that sank the Kursk sub.
Fortunately, hydrazine is not involved with cars at all, and neither is nitric acid. Which is nice, because both compounds are bloody scary to work with.