Oxides

English: A rusty screw (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oxygen. No life can exist on earth without it. Well, actually, there are a lot of elements that life could not exist without, but Oxygen is the most vital. Many people think that it is water that is the most vital, but water is one-third Oxygen, so there you go. There are many important aspects of Oxygen, not all of which I understand, but here I will share information on the Oxygen quality I do know; the ability to hook on to other elements more than any other.

Oxygen will grab onto many elements, combining with them and forming compounds. Iron is one of the elements that Oxygen likes, unfortunately. Helped along by water, the Oxygen grabs on and combines with the exposed Iron, forming a very flaky compound that can just fall off, leaving fresh Iron to grab onto. There are very many interesting names we have for different Oxides, such as Di (in case you’re wondering, di means two or in Chemistry terms, two parts) -Hydrogen Oxide we call water, Iron Oxide we call rust, and Aluminum Oxide is… (drum roll) …Corundum! (as people who read my blog, you know that red Corundum is called Ruby, and Blue Corundum is called Sapphire.) 

One other thing that is a very intersting thing about Oxygen, is that when something Oxidizes super quickly, the product is fire, a subject that takes a whole ‘nother post to write about. To read that post, click here.