How come salt doesn’t turn into bleach on contact with air, since the only thing separating them chemically is a single oxygen atom?
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Oxygen in the air is in the form of O2, two oxygen atoms stuck together to form an oxygen molecule. For one of the oxygen atoms to bind to the salt molecule it would first have to leave the other oxygen atom in the oxygen molecule, effectively breaking up the oxygen molecule.
Breaking up an oxygen atom requires energy, more energy than we get from creating the bleach (hypochlorous acid) molecule.
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