How come salt doesn’t turn into bleach on contact with air, since the only thing separating them chemically is a single oxygen atom?

Question

How come salt doesn’t turn into bleach on contact with air, since the only thing separating them chemically is a single oxygen atom?

In: 7

Answer 1

Radome’s answer is spot on. I just want to add that that’s the same reason diamonds (or even trees) don’t turn into carbon dioxide on contact with air. The oxygen atoms in O2 are already pretty happy, and even though they’d be even happier as CO2 (carbon dioxide), to get there they have to get ripper apart into single O’s first which they really dislike. So there’s a certain threshold of “activation energy” that has to be applied. That’s what happens when you light a fire. The wood doesn’t burn on contact with air – you have to provide the initial energy (a spark or flame) to help split some O2’s and generate single oxygens to react with the carbon.