Eli5: If water is 2 thirds oxygen, why do we need lungs?
In: Chemistry
The oxygen in water isn’t available to us in it’s current form.
Each oxygen atom in water is stuck (very strongly) to two hydrogen atom to form a water molecule. Our bodies can’t rip the oxygen atoms off the hydrogen into a form we can use to fuel ourselves. We need “free oxygen”, oxygen atoms that aren’t attached to anything else besides oxygen.
You can split the hydrogen and oxygen in water but it takes a lot of energy to do so (more than you can get back from using the oxygen to fuel your body) and you generally do it with lots of electricity, which we can’t generate inside ourselves.
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