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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Oxygen, Its Nature and Chemistry: What Is so Special About This Element?

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It would seem that an introduction to oxygen is unnecessary, for we deal with it and depend upon it every moment of our lives. Oxygen is to us the essential stuff of the air we breathe. We are aerobic animals who obtain energy by oxidizing foodstuffs. As such, we are wholly dependent on oxygen for life – go without it for a couple of minutes and we panic and may even suffer irreversible brain damage. In a few more minutes, we perish. Animal metabolism depends upon oxygen for almost all of its energy-generating processes. Yet this was not always so. Early in the history of the Earth, there was essentially no free oxygen anywhere, although oxygen has always been one of the most abundant elements on Earth. In the early Earth, virtually all oxygen was bound in compounds, mainly water and silicate rocks. Primitive microbes managed life without free oxygen.