The Vital Role Played by Oxygen in Everyday Life

Oxygen is the eighth element on the periodic table. It is in group 16 and block 2 as well as being part of block p. Oxygen's atomic number is 8, relative to how it is the eighth element on the table. Its chemical symbol is “O” which is just the first letter of the elements name. Its melting point is 54.36k, -218.79°C and -361.82°F, while it’s freezing points are 90.188K, 182.962°C and -297.332°F. At room temperature, 20°C, oxygen is an odorless gas. When gas is in liquid form it is a pale blue color. When gas is frozen it keeps this pale blue color. Oxygen is a life element, almost all life needs oxygen to survive, there are few that do not. It is found in so many aspects of life, natural to man-made. Oxygen is made from plants, who use the carbon dioxide we produce when we breathe in air. When we breathe it is used throughout are entire body, the human body as well as almost every animal need oxygen in their body in order to live, without it we would not be here. Even animals who do not have the same respiratory system as us need the oxygen that is in water.

In everyday life, oxygen is something everyone of us encounters every day. It's in the air we breath, it's in tons of metals like steel, and it’s in the water you drink. It’s used to retrieve metals and it is used to make metals. It’s used to manufacture plastics which are part of a lot of daily use for a majority of people. Oxygen can be a part of energy supply because of its role in combustion. Oxygen is used in gasoline to make or cars have a source of energy to go and it’s used in vehicles that aren’t everyday use like rockets that get sent to space for astronauts. It has to be used when astronauts go into space because of the lack of oxygen in space. Oxygen is a sort of fuel for fires. Fire, something we have used for years, needs oxygen in order to thrive.

Oxygen isn’t just used for day-to-day life stuff, it is also used in medicine and sanitation. For people that have breathing problems oxygen is given in order to treat what illness or disease they have at the time, though it may only be for short term use or just in the moment for a patient who is suffering. People who are suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning are also given an oxygen tank to clear that out since being exposed to air after a long period of being in carbon monoxide will not be enough to help. Besides medicine, oxygen tanks can be used elsewhere such as mountain climbing in high altitudes to help climbers not faint from oxygen deprivation and die. Not only is oxygen used for high altitudes it is also used for low altitude, below sea level. Humans can not breathe underwater, this is another experiment I wouldn’t recommend you try and recreate this as it has been tried numerous times and I am yet to see a real case of someone actively breathing while underwater. Since we can not breathe underwater we take oxygen tanks with a mask attached in order to breathe when we want to dive down under. If the person going under want to go deeper than humanly possible then they will use a submarine. This sustains us long enough to live for whatever discoveries we are trying to make.

Oxygen is combined with tons of other elements, it is highly reactive. It will lose its properties with some of the substances it combines with like water. Water isn't highly flammable and combustible, it’s actually the opposite and is even used to put out fire. Oxygen is what forms rust on iron. Iron and oxygen react very easily with each other and if iron is not well taken care of then rust will form. Too much oxygen can also be a bad thing. Too much oxygen in the blood will be toxic to almost any life form, this is what makes air good as it is not toxic to us, it’s just the right amount to prevent us from being intoxicated. Too much oxygen in a fire and it’ll spread wreaking havoc on buildings or forests, amongst other things. If oxygen is used too much along with a fuel it will cause an explosion too big to contain which will cause a lot of damage. This can also happen if one of the factors are too small.

While oxygen can be used to make man-made products, what we make can also affect the oxygen already in the air. A lot of what we make can be toxic to the environment and have an impact on the air causing air pollution, which affects every person and every animal that needs air for their day to day survival. Air pollution is a mixture of natural and toxic man-made substances, which has lead to very many people having respiratory problems based on where they grew up and