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Oxygen Essay

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Oxygen

Oxygen, symbol O, colorless, odorless, tasteless, slightly magnetic gaseous element. On earth, oxygen is more abundant than any other element.
Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by the British chemist Joseph Priestley and, independently, by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele; it was shown to be an elemental gas by the French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier in his classic experiments on combustion.
Large amounts of oxygen are used in high-temperature welding torches, in which a mixture of oxygen and another gas produces a flame of much higher temperature than is obtained by burning gases in air. Oxygen is administered to patients whose breathing is impaired and also to …show more content…

Gaseous oxygen can be condensed to a pale blue liquid that is strongly magnetic. Pale blue solid oxygen is produced by compressing the liquid. The atomic weight of oxygen is 15.9994.Oxygen composes 21 percent by volume or 23.15 percent by weight of the atmosphere; 85.8 percent by weight of the oceans and, as a constituent of most rocks and minerals,
46.7 percent by weight of the solid crust of the earth. Oxygen comprises 60 percent of the human body. It is a constituent of all living tissues; almost all plants and animals, including all humans, require oxygen, in the free or combined state, to maintain life.3
Three structural forms of oxygen are known: ordinary oxygen, containing two atoms per molecule, formula O2; ozone, containing three atoms per molecule, formula O3; and a pale blue, nonmagnetic form, O4, containing four atoms per molecule, which readily breaks down into ordinary oxygen. Three stable isotopes of oxygen are known; oxygen-16 (atomic mass 16) is the most abundant. It comprises 99.76 percent of ordinary oxygen and was used in determination of atomic weights until the 1960s.
Oxygen is prepared in the laboratory from salts such as potassium chlorate, barium peroxide, and sodium peroxide. The most important industrial methods for the preparation of oxygen are the electrolysis of water and the

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