Today’s [Triviatime](https://triviatime.app/) had a Q which asked what % of the earth’s air is made of Oxygen. The answer was 21% but this only left me with more questions!
How??? What else is there and what are the implications of those elements/things being literally everywhere in the air. Fellow laymen eggheads, please add to this list of thoughts you have about this which need to be addressed:
– How does our breathing filter the other stuff out?
– What actually is air if it’s made up of so many different things, I thought air basically = oxygen?
– How steady is this 21% level? Can this change overtime, is that dangerous, and if so how?
– Etc
In: 0
Oxygen is the second-largest component of Earth’s air. Almost all of the rest is nitrogen, with some water vapor and small amounts of argon, carbon dioxide, and other gases.
There isn’t much effect from that nitrogen, though. Nitrogen in the air (that is, the molecule N_2 made of two nitrogen atoms bonded together) has an exceptionally strong bond that is almost impossible to break apart, which means that nitrogen doesn’t really react chemically with much of anything. You don’t ‘filter it out’ – your blood contains some dissolved nitrogen – but your body also doesn’t actively pull nitrogen from the air the way it does oxygen (that’s the point of the hemoglobin in your blood).
The level is pretty steady the vast majority of the time. It might dip a little indoors, but not much; by the time you’ve consumed enough oxygen to meaningfully change that number you’ve *added* enough carbon dioxide to feel very sick. You can tolerate a wide range of oxygen levels anyway, though. For example, if you go up to high altitude, you’re effectively breathing something like 2/3 of the normal oxygen level because the air is much thinner.
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