2024-03-04
Show your students that decomposition reactions are a key part of our everyday lives
The word oxygen comes from ‘oxygène’, the name that French scientist Antoine Lavoisier gave to what he called the ‘eminently respirable’, or breathable, part of air. Lavoisier realised there was a connection between the air we breathe and the chemistry of combustion. He showed that by heating a chemical called mercury calx – a red powder we now know as mercury(II) oxide – he could separate it into two components, one of which was a breathable gas, oxygen.