eli5 why does submerging something in oil create an anaerobic condition while submerging something in water doesn’t?

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I am just really confused about aerobic and anaerobic enviroments.
Also, my english is pretty shitty

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Have you heard of solubility?
We can take sugar and water as an example. Sugar is a solid. Water is a liquid. When mixing the two you get sugar solution i. e sugar is dissolved in water. You can’t differentiate between sugar and water in the sugar solution.
Let’s take another example. Water and drops of lemon juice. In this case both are liquids. Yet after mixing you get a solution where you can’t pin point where is water and where is the lemon drops.
Similarly water is capable of dissolving gases. Oxygen is fairly soluble in water. This means that it means that some amount of oxygen molecules exist in water. So these oxygen molecules can aid aerobic respiration (breakdown of molecules that require presence of oxygen).
Whereas in oil, oxygen doesn’t dissolve in oil. So due to unavailability of oxygen, anaerobic respiration (breakdown of molecules when oxygen is absent) takes place.
For a further thought, you can think of how photosynthesis takes place in underwater plants and underwater algae.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A lot of oxygen is dissolved in water – that’s how fish and other aquatic life including plants and algae live. Oxygen (and CO2 and nitrogen) readily dissolve in water, as you can see in carbonated drinks for example, because there’s room between water molecules for gas molecules to sit around. Oils and fats are made of triglycerides which are long organic molecules that are folded in many ways and have a lot of surface areas to “rub against each other” (that’s why oils are viscous and appear thick). That doesn’t leave much room between the molecules for anything, so gas can’t dissolve in it.