Paramagnetism of Liquid Oxygen

A chemical demonstration of the paramagnetism of oxygen, as shown by the attraction of liquid oxygen to a magnet. Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

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Howto & Style

Tags:

• Carleton
• University
• Chemistry
• Demonstration
• Paramagnetism
• Liquid
• Oxygen

[sodacan187]

I have quick question, seeing how this is liquid oxygen, would drinking it when you need air like underwater do what I'd hope it would do? This of course doesn't take in account the extreme temperature but I'm curious.

[robertburkottawa]

It would freeze your insides, it would never reach your lungs, and as it expanded it would pressurize you from the inside. You would die. Period.

[joeyf555]

It's not as fun as it seems. Enjoy the time you have left before you have actual responsibilities.

[theblufintuna]

@jqs1943 yea well what you dont account for is that with the increase in the emission of CO2, plants will absorb more CO2 and produce more O2.. simple chem bro.

[an50331]

i think the blue color of oxygen is beautiful

but im 65% oxygen so i might be biased

[soumyadreamz]

is O2 highly paramagnetic???

[azmanabdula]

@chiagirl bleeding.....maybe for high blood pressure.....and if dying isnt the sort of thing you worry about....

gave me a good laugh....

peace......

[chiagirl]

@jqs1943 Seriously? Seriously? Dude you are omitting large portions of the O2 cycle. Take a class on atmospheric chemistry please. O2 is on the decline, just as CO2 is on the rise, but these are minute changes on the order of ~10^-3 (per 5 years), not even including the replenishment cycle from things like Photosynthesis. Your 60 year old data definitely needs recalibration. Heck you probably think 'bleeding' is still an accepted medical practice.

[araMannA]

This was SO cool! :0

I literally was left speechless!

[Benitotorecio]

Is it possible to separate oxygen from nitrogen by an electromagnet?  If two test tubes joined together by a capillar or straw, with one of the tubes surrounden by a copper coil as an air core solenoid. Will the solenoid tube be filled with oxygen while the other one with nitrogen?

[jqs1943]

the rest is other chemical elements. Todays world population is in excess of 6.5 billion. Although the natural electrolysis of water by the world's thermo reactrive processes decomposes water and replenishes the oxygen, this process is rather slow. On the other hand we are continuously exploiting iron ores as well as other metals that oxydize and retain the oxygen atoms. Think abvout it Bob; I see that you are a bright and knowledgeble person.

[jqs1943]

@ediblebatteries You'll need to dig a little deeper to find the values that i'm talking about. In order for me to make others understand why the oxygen volume in the atmosphere might have diminished or is diminishing is a rather complex explanation that requires more than 400 characters as is alotted to us by u tube under comments,but consider this reality; i was a student back in the 1950's. the world's population was slightly over one billion, a person weighing 180 lbs. is about 125 oxygen and

[ediblebatteries]

@jqs1943 It is true, oxygen is converted to carbon dioxide in combustion reactions, but having lost 36% of our atmospheric oxygen in the last 150 years is absurd. A quick 5 minute internet search yielded an article reporting a loss of 0.1% oxygen since pre-industrial revolution numbers. I think the difference you're talking about could be from different methods of detecting atmospheric concentrations of oxygen or inaccurate instrument calibrations.