PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Oxygen is a COLORLESS, ODORLESS, & TASTELESS GAS that is contained in Air and Water, in the Earth's Crust, and in All Forms Of Life.
It naturally occurs as a substance in Two (2) Allotropic Varieties:
A) the natural oxygen and
B) the ozone.
It makes up 21% of the Earth's Atmosphere and constitutes about HALF of the total material of the surface, making it the MOST ABUNDANT ELEMENT ON EARTH, followed by Silicon & Aluminum.
Individual atoms of oxygen are common in space, particularly around massive stars. It was only in August 2011 that the molecular oxygen (the oxygen we breathe) was found to exist deep in space in a star-forming region in the Orion Nebula, roughly 1,500 light-years from the Earth, by the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory.
50% of the Earth's oxygen is produced by
PHYTOPLANKTON:
--microscopic plant-like organisms floating on the upper part of the ocean. Through the process of photosynthesis. They absorb carbon dioxide and sunlight and turn it into chemical energy in the leaves using chlorophyll as a catalyst.
This releases glucose (a sugar), and oxygen. Most of the oxygen released as a result of photosynthesis is from water which undergoes a photo-oxidation process (a process of oxidation caused by light). Most of the rest of the Earth's oxygen is produced by plants growing on land, particularly in areas with high rainfall.
Oxygen can also be produced as the result of a chemical reaction in which oxygen is freed from a chemical compound and becomes gas, such as commercial, fractional-distillation of air, which is about 78% Nitrogen & 21% Oxygen.
