Eddy Egan October 10, 2006

Tuliszewski Period ½
Nitrogen
Nitrogen was discovered by chemist Daniel Rutherford in 1772 when he found

out that a portion of air did not combust. It was discovered to be inert and lifeless when

animals died in it and it smothered flames; but is most important in things like food and

explosives. Due to this inertness of the gas, planes, racecars, trucking, and NASA have

tires and chambers filled with nitrogen to reduce the risk of fires and to asphyxiate

oxygen from fires. Other uses of Nitrogen include things starting from gunpowder and

fertilizer to cryopreservation and as a cooling agent. A common everyday use is that

nitrogen is present in all living tissues and is a key part of amino and nuclei acids all of

which are needed to sustain life. Nitrogen has the atomic number of four and has a mass

of about fourteen amu. The nucleus is consisted of seven protons and seven neutrons with

two energy levels around it, two in the first level and five in the second. Other important

facts about nitrogen are that it is the main element found in our air making up about

seventy-eight percent of it by volume. In oxide forms it has many more uses as in Nitrous

Oxide, which is also known as laughing gas and is an anesthesia, Nitric Oxide is used to

produce sulfuric acid. If you have ever seen what smog looks like you are actually

looking at an excited nitrogen molecule that oxidized with oxygen which is also called

Nitrogen Dioxide. Another example of Nitrogen was demonstrated during the Oklahoma

City Bombing when a seemingly safe fertilizer was used as an explosive which killed

hundreds even when it wasn’t even used in the form of Nitroglycerin, the principle

explosive in dynamite.
Works Cited

Nitrogen. (9 Oct. 2006). Wikipedia. Retrieved October 9, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen

Nitrogen. (2006) Yahoo Education. Retrieved October 9, 2006.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia/entry/nitrogen