Sunday, May 25, 2014

Liquid Oxygen

The boiling point of oxygen. It is something I never really gave much thought, I never thought of oxygen even reaching a boiling point.

When Dr. Kat mentioned the boiling point would have to be pretty low since we breathe it in, then it began to make sense. I think this is one of those things we were never taught in the classroom, but when you sit down and actually think it through, you realize oxygen in fact, does boil.

According to How Stuff Works, The boiling points of liquids vary widely. At normal atmospheric pressure, for example, liquid oxygen boils at -297.4 F. (-183 C.), ether at 94.1 F. (34.5 C.), water at 212 F. (100 C.), and mercury at 674.4 F. (356.9 C.). Because of this variation in boiling points, two or more liquids can often be separated by a process called fractional distillation.
Pressure affects boiling points. An increase of pressure retards the formation of vapor so that greater heating of the liquid becomes necessary to bring about boiling. A decrease of pressure, such as that which accompanies an increase in altitude, lowers the boiling point. For example, the boiling point of water drops about 1.8 F. with each increase of 1,000 feet (about 1 C. per 300 m) in altitude. 

Here is a video for those who were wondering what this looked like:



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