Nitrogen and oxygen atmospheric elements

Molecules based on nitrogen, the parent element of ammonia and the amines, and oxygen, the parent element of water, are key molecules of life. 

My point is that chemistry imitates life in terms of the richness added by diversity. Up to this point, our experience has been pretty much at the meat-and-potatoes level, with focus on only two elements carbon and hydrogen. We can add interest by adding diversity in terms of additional elements. 1 begin doing that here. 

In this chapter, I focus on two elements that are central for most molecules characteristic of living systems nitrogen and oxygen. 

Elemental nitrogen is a diatomic gas, N2, mass 28. Other elements that occur as gases under the usual conditions of temperature and pressure may also contain two atoms H2 and O2, for example. Other gases occur simply as monatomic species helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), and krypton (Kr), for example. Elemental nitrogen forms about 78% of our atmosphere most of the remainder is oxygen. 

The characteristic chemical feature of N2 is its stability. Like acetylene, N2 has a triple bond N=N. This triple bond has great strength and vigorous conditions are required to convert N2 into ammonia, NH3, in the chemistry laboratory. This conversion is of great importance as ammonia is employed in enormous quantities for human purposes. 

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