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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 ...
Compounds containing oxygen in other oxidation states are very uncommon: − 1 ⁄ 2 (superoxides), − 1 ⁄ 3 , 0 (elemental, hypofluorous acid), + 1 ⁄ 2 , +1 (dioxygen difluoride), and +2 (oxygen difluoride). Oxygen is reactive and will form oxides with all other elements except the noble gases helium, neon, argon and krypton. [1]
Oxygen is the only simple diatomic molecule (and one of the few molecules in general) to carry a magnetic moment. [1] This makes solid oxygen particularly interesting, as it is considered a "spin-controlled" crystal [ 1 ] that displays antiferromagnetic magnetic order in the low temperature phases.
Oxygen began building up in the prebiotic atmosphere at approximately 1.85 Ga during the Neoarchean-Paleoproterozoic boundary, a paleogeological event known as the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE). At current rates of primary production, today's concentration of oxygen could be produced by photosynthetic organisms in 2,000 years. [4]
There are several known allotropes of oxygen. The most familiar is molecular oxygen (O 2), present at significant levels in Earth's atmosphere and also known as dioxygen or triplet oxygen. Another is the highly reactive ozone (O 3). Others are: Atomic oxygen (O 1), a free radical. Singlet oxygen (O * 2), one of two metastable states of ...
For example, molecules of water (H 2 O) contain atoms of hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O), so water can be said as a compound consisting of the elements hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) even though it does not contain the chemical substances (di)hydrogen (H 2) and (di)oxygen (O 2), as H 2 O molecules are different from H 2 and O 2 molecules. For the ...
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Diatomic molecules (from Greek di- 'two') are molecules composed of only two atoms, of the same or different chemical elements. If a diatomic molecule consists of two atoms of the same element, such as hydrogen ( H 2 ) or oxygen ( O 2 ), then it is said to be homonuclear .