Talk:Oxygen

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Featured articleOxygen is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
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Current status: Featured article
  • Archive 1 through January 2008.
    (when it became a Featured Article)
  • Article vandalised with Jason Preistly name and TV show cross references being inserted instead of joseph preistly. JDN Archive 2

Undue trivia?[edit]

Use of liquid oxygen in publicity stunts burning barbecue grills. Is this encyclopaedic? The website linked as a reference is also probably unsuitable for a features article. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:30, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree.JSR (talk) 14:35, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

So do I — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.49.106.117 (talk) 15:56, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

External links modified[edit]

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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:39, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Oxygen was disovered in 1774. They could not breath before that tho ))):  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.94.1.102 (talk) 02:47, 11 December 2017 (UTC) 

Photo of scuba divers.[edit]

This is probably not the best photo for this article, as it is highly unlikely that the cylinders contained oxygen, or that the divers were particularly deep. The alt text was misleading, so I removed it. The current caption is also inaccurate at best. If the purpose of the photo can be defined, I will try to find a better one. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:31, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Limits of Priestley's discovery; Lavoisier's priority in recognizing oxygen as an element[edit]

I've altered the lede section to clarify that Priestley's discovery of oxygen did not include recognition of oxygen as an element, and that it was Lavoisier (not Priestley) who first recognized oxygen as an element and first gave a correct explanation of its role in combustion. It is misleading at best to attribute the discovery of oxygen to Priestley without further explanation, when he not only never recognized it as an element, but went to his deathbed firmly convinced of a radically incorrect account of one of the most fundamental chemical roles of oxygen, its participation in combustion. From my own point of view, I'm not sure it makes sense to describe the first isolator of oxygen as having discovered it at all, when he so thoroughly misunderstood the fundamental nature of the gas he had isolated. Even assuming (as I have) that the questionable identification of Priestley as the discoverer is supported by secondary sources and should remain in the article, it should not be presented in a way that is sure to mislead the naive reader.

To be sure, what should reasonably count as discovery is historically relative. If we attribute the discovery of copper to prehistory, or of phosphorus to alchemy, no one will be misled into thinking that they understood the role of copper or phosphorus as elements. But by the time of Priestley and Lavoisier, there is a tacit background assumption of a higher level of understanding on the part of a "discoverer". The article should make it clear in the lede that Priestley lacked that understanding.

Syrenka V (talk) 07:02, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I think that's very fair. Scheele, Priestley, and Lavoisier all have reasonable claims to discovery depending on how you look at it, and the lede now justly mentions all three and the angles from which their claim can be supported. Double sharp (talk) 08:38, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

This bit could be improved/corrected[edit]

This sentence in 2nd paragraph:

"Oxygen is continuously replenished in Earth's atmosphere by photosynthesis, which uses the energy of sunlight to produce oxygen from water and carbon dioxide. Oxygen is too chemically reactive to remain a free element in air without being continuously replenished by the photosynthetic action of living organisms."

Should be modified to be something like:

The Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide balance in the atmosphere and oceans (and to a greater extent the entire earth's crust) is fundamentally important to all life on earth. The processes of photosynthesis and respiration continually convert CO2 to O2 and O2 to CO2 respectively. In addition, natural processes can impact or add to the balance of these gases in both steady state or sudden event type interactions.

At very high concentrations oxygen becomes very reactive and would tend to be depleted from the atmosphere through oxidation reactions. This however is prevented naturally through the presence of nitrogen, which makes up approximately 78% of the earth's atmosphere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RfullE (talkcontribs) 00:19, 19 May 2018 (UTC)