Oppie Explains...What Exactly is Oxygen?

by Kourtnie Howerton

Oxygen is one of the Earth's building blocks. Throughout this project we will be discussing what is a mole of oxygen? Well, chemists use the word mole to indicate the quantity of a substance that has a mass in grams numerically equal to it's molecular mass. The building blocks that earth contains are called elements. Elements are substances that cannot be broken down into anything else by physical or chemical means. Elements can only be changed by atomic fission or fusion. The smallest unit of an element is an atom. An atom of oxygen has eight electrons. Two electrons are in it's first shell, which leaves six electrons for the second shell. The second shell of all atoms can hold eight electrons. Oxygen, like hydrogen, forms bonds easily with other elements whose outer shells do not have all the electrons they can hold.

Human beings breathe 20,000 to 25,000 times everyday, removing oxygen from the air each time humans inhale. A human breathes sixteen to seventeen times per minute, and in the process of breathing you take the air into cavities in your lungs. Therefor the oxygen molecules pass through the thin membranes and combine with hemoglobin to form an unstable compound; oxyhemoglobin. The word unstable means that the compound can break down easily.

In our bodies the oxygen combines with digested food, and in the process water and carbon dioxide are formed, which humans discharge when they exhale. Green plants take water and carbon dioxide and use them to make food, releasing oxygen. This exchange is part of the earth's recycling system.

Oxygen is one of the nine elements that make up 95% of the weight of the lithosphere. Except for a couple of elements these nine elements always exist as parts of compounds in the lithosphere, which is the layer including the earth's crust and upper mantle. More than 99.99% of the lower level of the atmosphere, which is the level that supports the biosphere, which occupies all other space, is composed of five gases, oxygen is one of these five gases with a 20.946%. The hydrosphere, that contains all the waters of the earth's surface, consists of only two elements hydrogen and oxygen, but because of the dissolving action of the water, particles of many elements and compounds are dissolved and suspended in all bodies of water. Oxygen is also one of the thirteen elements that make up the human body, it's proportion equals 64.5%.

Stated in the book, "Earth, The Great Recycler", if plants and animals have been using huge quantities of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and lesser quantities of nitrogen, sulfur, potassium, phosphorous, calcium, and other elements for two billion or more years there would be none left for living things today if earth were not an extremely efficient recycling plant. All living things are basically made up of protein substances called protoplasm. Four building blocks: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen make up ninety nine percent of this living tissue. Oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen exists in an uncombined state in the atmosphere. When a substance combines with oxygen a process is called oxidation, and this substance is oxidized. In human bodies some of the heat energy from the oxidation of food keeps your body temperature at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of the rest of the energy enables other chemical changes to take place, therefore, the new compounds that make up your bodies tissues are formed. For plants, photosynthesis is often referred to as the oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle because plants release oxygen at this same time as they used carbon dioxide in producing food. Plants and animals both use oxygen to oxidize food, and both produce carbon dioxide and water when they do this. Plants take oxygen, where it is found in the air, when the plant has no free oxygen in side the leaf left over from the process of photosynthesis. The process of oxidizing glucose and other food materials in living tissues is called respiration. Respiration takes place in green plants, in non-green plants such as bacteria and mushrooms, and animals and human bodies. Without this constant changing of carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen, and visa versa the biosphere could not exist, because the building blocks would quickly be unavailable if they remained in one form or the other. Let's remember it is the only healthy plants which are producing surplus food that release the oxygen needed to replenish the supply in the atmosphere.

While oxygen from the air enters your bloodstream, surplus carbon dioxide and water vapor, which were formed in your tissues when your food was oxidized, pass through the thin lung membranes to the air pockets and are exhaled.