Despite the fact that nitrogen cannot be noticed if it is not liquefied or frozen, the importance of this gas for humans and civilization is second only to oxygen and hydrogen. Nitrogen is used in a wide variety of fields of human activity from medicine to the production of explosives. Hundreds of millions of tons of nitrogen and its derivatives are produced annually in the world. Here are just a few facts about how nitrogen was discovered, researched, produced and used:
1. At the end of the 17th century, three chemists at once - Henry Cavendish, Joseph Priestley and Daniel Rutherford - managed to obtain nitrogen. However, none of them understood the properties of the resulting gas enough to discover a new substance. Priestley even confused it with oxygen. Rutherford was the most consistent in describing the properties of a gas that does not support combustion and does not react with other substances, so he got the pioneer laurels.
Daniel Rutherford
2. Actually “nitrogen” the gas was named by Antoine Lavoisier, using the ancient Greek word “lifeless”.
3. By volume, nitrogen is 4/5 of the earth's atmosphere. The world's oceans, the earth's crust and the mantle contain significant amounts of nitrogen, and in the mantle it is an order of magnitude more than in the crust.
4. 2.5% of the mass of all living organisms on Earth is nitrogen. In terms of mass fraction in the biosphere, this gas is second only to oxygen, hydrogen and carbon.
5. Properly pure nitrogen as a gas is harmless, odorless and tasteless. Nitrogen is dangerous only in high concentration - it can cause intoxication, suffocation and death. Nitrogen is also terrible in case of decompression sickness, when the blood of submariners, during a rapid ascent from a considerable depth, seems to boil, and nitrogen bubbles rupture the blood vessels. A person suffering from such an illness can rise to the surface alive, but at best lose limbs, and at worst, die within a few hours.
6. Previously, nitrogen was obtained from various minerals, but now about a billion tons of nitrogen per year is extracted directly from the atmosphere.
7. The second Terminator froze in liquid nitrogen, but this cinematic scene is pure fiction. Liquid nitrogen really has a very low temperature, but the heat capacity of this gas is so low that the freezing time of even small objects is tens of minutes.
8. Liquid nitrogen is most actively used in various cooling units (inertness to other substances makes nitrogen an ideal refrigerant) and in cryotherapy - cold treatment. In recent years, cryotherapy has been actively used in sports.
9. Nitrogen inertness is actively used in the food industry. In storage and packaging with pure nitrogen atmosphere, products can be stored for a very long time.
Installation for creating nitrogen atmosphere in a food warehouse
10. Nitrogen is sometimes used in beer bottling instead of traditional carbon dioxide. However, experts say its bubbles are smaller and this carbonation is not suitable for all beers.
11. Nitrogen is pumped into the chambers of the aircraft landing gear for fire safety purposes.
12. Nitrogen is the most effective fire extinguishing agent. Ordinary fires are extinguished very rarely - the gas is difficult to promptly deliver to the fire site in the city, and it quickly evaporates in open areas. But in mines, the method of extinguishing a fire by displacing oxygen with nitrogen from a burning mine is often used.
13. Nitric oxide I, better known as nitrous oxide, is used both as an anesthetic and a substance that improves the performance of a car engine. It does not burn itself, but it supports combustion well.
You can speed up ...
14. Nitric oxide II is a very poisonous substance. However, it is present in small amounts in all living organisms. In the human body, nitric oxide (as this substance is more often called) is produced to normalize the work of the heart and prevent hypertension and heart attacks. In these diseases, diets that include beets, spinach, arugula and other greens are used to stimulate nitric oxide production.
15. Nitroglycerin (a complex compound of nitric acid with glycerin), tablets of which the cores are placed under the tongue, and the strongest explosive with the same name, are really one and the same substance.
16. In general, the vast majority of modern explosives are manufactured using nitrogen.
17. Nitrogen is also critical for fertilizer production. Nitrogen fertilizers, in turn, are of great importance for crop yields.
18. The tube of a mercury thermometer contains silvery mercury and colorless nitrogen.
19. Nitrogen is found not only not on the Earth. The atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is almost entirely nitrogen. Hydrogen, oxygen, helium and nitrogen are the four most common chemical elements in the universe.
Titan's nitrogen atmosphere is over 400 km thick
20. In November 2017, a girl was born in the United States as a result of a very unusual procedure. Her mother received an embryo that was kept frozen in liquid nitrogen for 24 years. Pregnancy and childbirth went well, the girl was born healthy.
