Exactly as the title asks.

Pure oxygen is generally represented as O2 yet oxygen is an element of the periodic table. Why is it O2 and not just O?

  • @[email protected]
    30•10 months ago

    I don’t know if anyone is interested but there would be more versions too. Solid oxygen (red oxygen) at high pressure used to be thought of as O4, tetraoxygen aka oxozone. But if you look at it with x-ray crystallography it’s O8, octaoxygen. Cool huh

    • @korfuri
      4•10 months ago

      I had no idea, but yeah that’s very cool!