Chemistry

10 Nitrogen Facts

Image of solid, liquid, and gaseous nitrogen.

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Nitrogen is odorless, tasteless, and colorless.
Nitrogen gas (N₂) makes up 78.1% of the volume of the Earth’s air.
Nitrogen is a nonmetal.
Nitrogen gas is relatively inert, but soil bacteria can 'fix' nitrogen into a form that plants and animals can use to make amino acids and proteins.
The French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier named nitrogen azote, meaning without life.
Nitrogen was sometimes referred to as 'burnt' or 'dephlogisticated' air.
Nitrogen compounds are found in foods, fertilizers, poisons, and explosives.
Nitrogen is responsible for the orange-red, blue-green, blue-violet, and deep violet colors of the aurora.
One way to prepare nitrogen gas is by liquefaction and fractional distillation from the atmosphere.
Nitrogen has a valence of 3 or 5.

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