as I was told from early education that the air we currently breathe in contains 21% oxygen and 77-ish% of nitrogen and the rest are other particles.
So I have a dumb question on what the body uses nitrogen we breathe in for?
In: 387
Nothing.
Some nitrogen gas is dissolved in the blood, but it doesn’t actually do anything there. If you go diving, under the intense pressure more nitrogen gets dissolved, and if you return to the surface too quickly, that gas comes out of solution forming bubbles in your blood. This is called the bends and is very dangerous. You need to slowly rise to the surface while constantly breathing to avoid this, allowing the nitrogen to leave your blood through your lungs like other gasses.
A 100% oxygen atmosphere is actually dangerous to breathe because of how reactive it is. It can actually burn your lungs.
Nitrogen (N2) is a triple bond, so it takes a lot of energy to break that bond, so once it’s in that N2 state, it tends to stay that way.
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