Nitrogen Nitrogen is an element, in which its name is derived from the Latin word ‘nitrum’ known to be the fifth most abundant element in the universe. Nitrogen is one of the building blocks of life; living organisms may cease to exist without the existence of nitrogen. It can be said that nitrogen makes up of 80 percent of our atmosphere. It has an atomic number of 7 and is located in the far left of the periodic table. The element belongs to Group 15, Period 2 and p Block and has an electronic configuration of 1s2 2s2 2p3. Nitrogen first came about when a Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered that there were two types of air in the atmosphere. One being ‘fire air’ (oxygen) because it supported combustion, and the other being …show more content…
It can be thought of as a measure of the difficulty of removing electrons or the strength of the electrons that is bounded. Consequently, the higher the ionization energy, the more difficult it is to remove an electron. Thus, ionization energy is considered as an indicator of an atom’s reactivity. This type of energy is usually expressed in kJ/mol. Similarly as the atomic radius, the ionization energy follows a trend on the periodic table of elements. Ionization energy increases as you go from left to right of an element’s period. This is mainly due to the fact that the atomic radius generally decreases when you move across the element’s period, therefore there is a greater effective attraction between the negatively charged electrons and positively-charged nucleus. The ionization energy of a nitrogen is calculated as 1400 …show more content…
However, nitrogen is not only associated with gas. Nitrogen turns to a liquid state when exposed to extremely low temperature (-210 C). Liquid nitrogen has a density of 0.807 g/ml. Nitrogen is widely used in the chemical industry as well as in our everyday daily lives. In the chemical industry, nitrogen is needed to make fertilizers, nitric acid, nylon, dyes and explosives. To do so, nitrogen must be reacted with hydrogen which will produce ammonia. Nitrogen in the form of liquids are commonly applied for freezing (refrigerant) foods or any sort of objects that is needed to be kept at cold temperature. Nitrogen helps to maintain their moisture, colour flavour as well as its