First Book in Chemistry Author:Worthington Hooker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: How nitrogen differs from oxygen. Why nothing can bum In nitrogen. CHAPTER III. NITROGEN. To every gallon of oxygen in the air there are about four gall... more »ons of another gas called nitrogen. This gas is very diQeast, in some respects, from oxygen. Nothing will burn in it.Rippose that you have two jars, in one of which is oxygen, and in the other nitrogen. If you put a lighted candle into the jar of oxygen, it will, you know, burn brighter than it does in the air. But if you take it out of the oxygen, and put it into the jar of nitrogen, it will go out. Not even phosphorus will burn in nitrogen. So, if all the oxygen should be taken out of the air, every fire and light would go out. Besides this, no animal can live in nitrogen gas. If you put a mouse into a jar of oxygen he will be more lively than in common air, and will act as if he were crazy, jumping about in the most singular manner; but if you should put him into ajar of nitrogen, he would die at once. And if all the oxygen should be taken out of the air, all animals would die, just as all the fires and lights would be extinguished. But this nitrogen gas does not really put out fires and lights. A light, when placed in a jar of nitrogen, goes out merely because there is no oxygen. It must have oxygen to keep on burning. Only put a little oxygen in with the nitrogen, and the candle will burn; for it does burn well in a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, Why animals can not live in nitrogen. What would happen if the air were all oxygen. that is, common air, in which there is four times as much nitrogen as oxygen. So, too, nitrogen does not kill any animal, although he can not live in it. It does not act as a poison when it goes into the lungs; for there is going into the lungs of all animals, all the time, ...« less