I’ve seen Hydrogen Peroxide as an ingredient in a lot of disinfectants, but I’m not well-versed in chemistry, so I was trying to get a better idea of how it works. I keep reading something about the extra oxygen, but if that could be Eli5-ed, that’d be great.
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The extra oxygen in H202 has fewer electrons that it wants to have. Joining with water to form H202 is *ok* for it, but it would much rather just have enough electrons.
So when the H202 touches another material it’ll rip away electrons, give them to the oxygen, and the oxygen is happy and leaves the H202. Two such Oxygen atoms will form a pair called, O2 or “molecular Oxygen” which is just normal Oxygen gas. So that’s why the peroxide bubbles and produces a gas, leaving behind water.
But the material that had it’s electrons stolen is now “broken”. In the case of this material being the cell wall or membrane of a living thing, this usually results in the death of the cell.
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