Exactly as the title asks.
Pure oxygen is generally represented as O2 yet oxygen is an element of the periodic table. Why is it O2 and not just O?
Exactly as the title asks.
Pure oxygen is generally represented as O2 yet oxygen is an element of the periodic table. Why is it O2 and not just O?
Oxygen is found in 3 forms: nascent (O), molecular (O2, the most common) and ozone (O3). Nascent oxygen, due to its electronic configuration (i.e how many electrons it has and how they’re spread out across its electronic shells) is unstable, and tends to quickly form bonds with another O, forming O2. This is also the case e.g. for hydrogen, which is usually found as H2.
You can find O in this form in some environments, in the upper atmosphere there is enough UV radiation to break up O2 into O.
So simply because it’s so reactive the most common form is oxygen paired with itself?
This is an ELI5 explanation. Well done💯💯
Yes, that’s right.
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I don’t know if anyone is interested but there would be more versions too. Solid oxygen (red oxygen) at high pressure used to be thought of as O4, tetraoxygen aka oxozone. But if you look at it with x-ray crystallography it’s O8, octaoxygen. Cool huh
I had no idea, but yeah that’s very cool!
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This question doesn’t even make sense. If atomic oxygen somehow magically appeared in your respiratory tract, it would immediately react with itself and probably burn you to death.
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I suspect it would rapidly react and give off energy as heat. This would likely be incompatible with life.
Not an expert.