chornedsnorkack - 15-3-2013 at 07:32
Oxygen gives on excitation by electricity or other hard radiation inter alia ozone. Fairly well known. It can decompose by catalysts or in two or more
molecule reactions (and is explosive at high concentrations, incl. liquid and solid) but its lifetime diverges to infinity at low concentrations. It
also is not active enough to react with ground state dinitrogen.
How about the other forms of oxygen?
Singlet oxygen has very long lifetime - 72 minutes. Can it react with dinitrogen?
And how fast will atomic oxygen react with ground state dioxygen to form ozone?
Finally, how about atomic nitrogen?
There is no trinitrogen, so in nitrogen, low concentrations of mononitrogen should be long lived. But how about air? Will ground state nitrogen atom
react with ground state dioxygen molecules?