14 Interesting Facts about Oxygen: Non Metal Gas Element Atomic Number 8

1 Earth has more oxygen than any other element making up half of the earth’s crust and 86% of the earth’s oceans. But as can be seen from the following, oxygen is a double-edged sword, essential for life on earth but also the basis for cell decay, global-warming and in its pure form, toxic to living things.

2 Oxygen is the third most abundant element of the universe (after hydrogen and helium). However our earth has a much higher level of oxygen than the average for our solar system.

Oxygen in Water

3 Properties of Oxygen

Atomic number: 8

Atomic weight: 15.9994

State: colorless gas

Category: non-metal

Melting point: -219°C (-362°F)

Boiling point: -183°C (-297°F)

Element Oxygen Facts

4 Oxygen is anything but a noble gas, being reactive and forming oxides with many other elements (except not for helium and other noble gases). It will combine with other gasses, metals and non-metals to form nitrous oxide, iron oxide, silver oxide and of course hydrogen to form…water. Incidentally, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen makes great rocket fuel.

5 Oxygen’s large proportion of 21% in our atmosphere is due to the oxygen emissions of early blue-green algae life forms 2.5 billion years ago, known as the ‘Great Oxygenation Event’. This was the beginning of photosynthesis – the process of plants using light and carbon dioxide to make energy and the byproduct, oxygen.

6 Just about every cell in the body need oxygen for tissue growth, metabolism and waste removal. Only four minutes of an oxygen-deprived brain will cause its cells to die. To provide a steady supply, the oxygen atom will fuse with the iron atom in hemoglobin in red blood cells to ferry oxygen to every cell of the body. Indeed, oxygen makes up 60% of the humans, as water is a hydrogen-oxygen compound. Oxygen can be found in our bones, teeth and blood to our urine and tears.

Discovery of Oxygen Facts

7 The chemists Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley uncovered oxygen’s existence within a year of each other, but Priestley’s work in 1774 was published first. However, it was Leonardo Da Vinci three hundred years earlier who detected a substance vital to life and which caused the candle flame to burn.

What is Oxygen or Not

8 Oxygen is a misnomer, as the French chemist Antoine Lavosoiser named this element in 1778 on the mistaken belief oxygen is present in all acids. Oxy is Greek for acid, and gene (as he had called it oxygene at the time) means provider or former. Despite this erroneous name ‘acid former’, the name, oxygen stuck.

  

9 More oxygen can be held in cold water than in warm water. This is why air bubbles will be seen forming on the inner sides of the glass of warmed water as some of the oxygen is forced out of the liquid.

Dangerous Forms of Oxygen

Oxygen Symbol

10 Breathing pure oxygen is toxic to humans and is a concern for deep sea divers. Oxygen poisoning can cause damage to the central nervous system, myopia, disorientation, seizures, breathing difficulties and even death. However in most cases, recovery is possible after breathing normal air.

11 Ozone, a form of oxygen with three oxygen atoms is toxic to humans, causing chest pain and breathing complications. Ozone exists in the stratosphere, providing a protective layer against some of the harmful UV rays from the sun. Ozone is created by lightning but is broken down by CFC gases from aerosols, car emissions and factory wastes.

What Oxygen Does

12 Oxygen is to blame for the rusts on all metal, yeast growth on cheese, ergot on wheat, microbes in cheese, penicillin on bread and most other microbes causing food spoils and decay. A simple way of preserving food is to remove oxygen by placing a lighted flame or bottle of carbonated water within a suitable container of food.

Altitude Sickness Facts

13 Altitude sickness is attributed to low air density and rarified oxygen at a height above 11,000 feet. Symptoms like a hangover may lead to complications from nose bleeds to pulmonary edema. The Death Zone above 26,000ft of any mountain is so named because of the dangerously rarified air that has claimed the lives of hundreds of climbers. Frozen bodies dot the last stretch of Mount Everest to this day.

14 In its exited state of an Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis (Northern or Southern Lights), oxygen is responsible for the bright green colors of the polar night sky.