Your history with oxygen

Oxygen is a chemical element with symbol O and atomic number 8. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς (oxys) ("acid", literally "sharp", referring to the sour taste ofacids) and -γόνος (-gοnos) ("producer", literally "begetter"), because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition. Atstandard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dioxygen, colorless, odorless, tasteless diatomic gas with the formula O₂. This compound is an important part of the atmosphere, and is necessary to sustain terrestrial life.

Oxygen is a member of the chalcogen group on the periodic table and is a highly reactivenonmetallic element that readily forms compounds (notably oxides) with almost all other elements. Oxygen is a strong oxidizing agent and has the second-highestelectronegativity of all reactive elements, second only to fluorine.^[1] By mass, oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium^[2] and themost abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust, making up almost half of the crust's mass.^[3] Free oxygen is too chemically reactive to appear on Earth without thephotosynthetic action of living organisms, which use the energy of sunlight to produce elemental oxygen from water. Elemental O₂ only began to accumulate in the atmosphere after the evolutionary appearance of these organisms, roughly 2.5 billion years ago.^[4]Diatomic oxygen gas constitutes 20.8% of the volume of air.^[5]

Because it comprises most of the mass in water, oxygen comprises most of the mass of living organisms (for example, about two-thirds of the human body's mass^[6]). All major classes of structural molecules in living organisms, such as proteins, carbohydrates, andfats, contain oxygen, as do the major inorganic compounds that comprise animal shells, teeth, and bone. Elemental oxygen is produced by cyanobacteria, algae and plants, and is used in cellular respiration for all complex life. Oxygen is toxic to obligately anaerobic organisms, which were the dominant form of early life on Earth until O₂ began to accumulate in the atmosphere. Another form (allotrope) of oxygen, ozone (O₃), helps protect the biosphere from ultraviolet radiation with the high-altitude ozone layer, but is a pollutant near the surface where it is a by-product of smog. At even higher low earth orbitaltitudes atomic oxygen is a significant presence and a cause of erosion for spacecraft.^[7]

Oxygen was independently discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, in 1773 or earlier, and Joseph Priestley in Wiltshire, in 1774, but Priestley is often given priority because his work was published first. The name oxygen was coined in 1777 by Antoine Lavoisier,^[8] whose experiments with oxygen helped to discredit the then-popularphlogiston theory of combustion and corrosion. Oxygen is produced industrially byfractional distillation of liquefied air, use of zeolites with pressure-cycling to concentrate oxygen from air, electrolysis of water and other means. Uses of oxygen include the production of steel, plastics and textiles; rocket propellant; oxygen therapy; and life support in aircraft, submarines, spaceflight and diving.