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The name oxygen was coined in 1777 by Antoine Lavoisier, who first recognized oxygen as a chemical element and correctly characterized the role it plays in combustion. Common industrial uses of oxygen include production of steel , plastics and textiles , brazing, welding and cutting of steels and other metals , rocket propellant , oxygen ...
Of the 26 "monoisotopic" elements that have only a single stable isotope, all but one have an odd atomic number—the single exception being beryllium. In addition, no odd-numbered element has more than two stable isotopes, while every even-numbered element with stable isotopes, except for helium, beryllium, and carbon, has at least three.
Solid oxygen forms at normal atmospheric pressure at a temperature below 54.36 K (−218.79 °C, −361.82 °F). Solid oxygen O 2 , like liquid oxygen , is a clear substance with a light sky-blue color caused by absorption in the red part of the visible light spectrum.
Inert atmospheres consisting of gases such as argon, nitrogen, or helium are commonly used in chemical reaction chambers and in storage containers for oxygen-or water-sensitive substances, to prevent unwanted reactions of these substances with oxygen or water. [4] Argon is widely used in fluorescence tubes and low energy light bulbs.
A chemical element is a chemical substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons. The number of protons is called the atomic number of that element. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8, meaning each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its nucleus.
The only chemical elements that form stable homonuclear diatomic molecules at standard temperature and pressure (STP) (or at typical laboratory conditions of 1 bar and 25 °C) are the gases hydrogen (H 2), nitrogen (N 2), oxygen (O 2), fluorine (F 2), and chlorine (Cl 2), and the liquid bromine (Br 2). [1]
Of the 94 natural elements, eighty have a stable isotope and one more has an almost-stable isotope (with a half-life of 2.01×10 19 years, over a billion times the age of the universe). [15] [b] Two more, thorium and uranium, have isotopes undergoing radioactive decay with a half-life comparable to the age of the Earth.
O, samples enriched with the other stable isotopes can be used for isotope labeling. For example, it was proven that the oxygen released in photosynthesis originates in H 2 O, rather than in the also consumed CO 2, by isotope tracing experiments. The oxygen contained in CO 2 in turn is used to make up the sugars formed by photosynthesis.