Air

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This is a short article about the chemical components of air.

Air is a mixture of gases of varying amounts. Most life on our planet would not exist without air, as they need to take in one or more of the gases found in air, in order to function. The first thing to learn is what the main chemicals are:

Nitrogen

Oxygen

Argon

Carbon dioxide

Water vapour

As well as gases, there are also smoke and dust particles. Smoke is a mixture of chemicals that come from burning fuels like wood, coal and vegetation and is usually harmful. Dust particles are tiny bits of a multitude of substances, such as sand, gravel, soil and biological matter. The levels of smoke and dust vary greatly depending on the environmental conditions.

Then we can learn what the proportion is for each component. Now, it's often not important to remember exact numbers in science, unless you need to for your work. So if you were a scientist looking at air quality, you would need to compare the air in one area with that of another. You can look up precise numbers, but you'd need to have a rough idea of what those are and then it'd be useful to know the exact figures because then you're not looking them up all the time.

For the purposes of learning the basics of science, which is what this website is about, it's enough to get to grips with the approximate numbers. You can do this even when looking at exact details. Please note, that I can't find a list of chemicals in air which also includes water vapour, but I'll put down the common range (every other number is the common figure). Water vapour can have as much as 5%, however.

Water vapour coming out of a hot spring

Anyway, here we go:

Nitrogen: 78%

Oxygen: 21%

Argon: 0.9%

Carbon dioxide: 0.01%

Water vapour: 1-3%

As well as these, there are others in smaller quantities than carbon dioxide, but I won't list them. Apart from argon, these are the main chemicals that are brought up whenever we discuss what is in the air or what organisms absorb into their bodies. For example, carbon dioxide is the main gas that's responsible for heating up the planet and oxygen is what we need to give our cells, and therefore our bodies, the energy they need to function.

So there you have it. Now you have a better idea of what gases make up air.