Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, usually referred to as the pnictogens. It is a common ingredient within the universe, estimated at seventh in total abundance within the Milky Way and the Photo voltaic System. At standard temperature and strain, two atoms of the ingredient bond to kind N2, a colourless and odourless diatomic gas. N2 types about 78% of Earth's atmosphere, making it essentially the most ample chemical species in air. Because of the volatility of nitrogen compounds, nitrogen is relatively uncommon within the stable elements of the Earth. It was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772 and independently by Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Henry Cavendish at about the same time. The title nitrogène was prompt 5 Step Formula by David Humphries French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in 1790 when it was found that nitrogen was present in nitric acid and nitrates. Antoine Lavoisier prompt as an alternative the identify azote, make money from home the Ancient Greek: ἀζωτικός "no life", as it is an asphyxiant gasoline; this name is utilized in numerous languages, and seems within the English names of some nitrogen compounds akin to hydrazine, azides and azo compounds.

Elemental nitrogen is normally produced from air by stress swing adsorption expertise. About 2/three of commercially produced elemental nitrogen is used as an inert (oxygen-free) fuel for business uses equivalent to food packaging, and much of the rest is used as liquid nitrogen in cryogenic applications. Many industrially vital compounds, comparable to ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates (propellants and explosives), and cyanides, include nitrogen. This causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in changing N2 into helpful compounds, but at the identical time it signifies that burning, exploding, or decomposing nitrogen compounds to kind nitrogen gasoline releases large quantities of typically useful energy. Synthetically produced ammonia and nitrates are key industrial fertilisers, and fertiliser nitrates are key pollutants within the eutrophication of water programs. Aside from its use in fertilisers and energy shops, nitrogen is a constituent of organic compounds as various as aramids utilized in high-energy fabric and cyanoacrylate utilized in superglue.

Nitrogen occurs in all organisms, primarily in amino acids (and thus proteins), in the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and within the power transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate. The human body comprises about 3% nitrogen by mass, the fourth most abundant element within the physique after oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. The nitrogen cycle describes the motion of the element from the air, into the biosphere and natural compounds, then again into the ambiance. Nitrogen is a constituent of every main pharmacological drug class, together with antibiotics. Many medicine are mimics or prodrugs of pure nitrogen-containing sign molecules: for instance, the organic nitrates nitroglycerin and nitroprusside control blood stress by metabolising into nitric oxide. Many notable nitrogen-containing drugs, such because the pure caffeine and morphine or the synthetic amphetamines, act on receptors of animal neurotransmitters. Nitrogen compounds have a really lengthy history, ammonium chloride having been identified to Herodotus. They were well known by the Center Ages. Alchemists knew nitric acid as aqua fortis (robust water), in addition to other nitrogen compounds resembling ammonium salts and nitrate salts.

The mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids was often called aqua regia (royal water), celebrated for its capacity to dissolve gold, the king of metals. The invention of nitrogen is attributed to the Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772, who referred to as it noxious air. Although he did not recognise it as a wholly totally different chemical substance, he clearly distinguished it from Joseph Black's "mounted air", or carbon dioxide. The truth that there was a part of air that doesn't help combustion was clear to Rutherford, although he was not conscious that it was an element. French chemist Antoine Lavoisier referred to nitrogen gasoline as "mephitic air" or azote, from the Greek phrase άζωτικός (azotikos), "no life", because it's asphyxiant. In an ambiance of pure nitrogen, animals died and flames had been extinguished. Although Lavoisier's title was not accepted in English because it was identified that each one gases however oxygen are both asphyxiant or outright toxic, it is used in many languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Albanian, Turkish, and so on.; the German Stickstoff equally refers to the identical characteristic, viz.

English within the frequent names of many nitrogen compounds, comparable to hydrazine and compounds of the azide ion. Lastly, it led to the name "pnictogens" for the group headed by nitrogen, from the Greek πνίγειν "to choke". French nitre (potassium nitrate, additionally called saltpetre) and the French suffix -gène, "producing", Work from Home Blueprint the Greek -γενής (-genes, "begotten"). Chaptal's which means was that nitrogen is the essential part of nitric acid, which in turn was produced from nitre. In earlier instances, nitre had been confused with Egyptian "natron" (sodium carbonate) - known as νίτρον (nitron) in Greek - which, despite the name, contained no nitrate. The earliest navy, industrial, and agricultural purposes of nitrogen compounds used saltpetre (sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate), most notably in gunpowder, and later as fertiliser. In 1910, Lord Rayleigh discovered that an electrical discharge in nitrogen gasoline produced "energetic nitrogen", a monatomic allotrope of nitrogen. The "whirling cloud of good yellow light" produced by his apparatus reacted with mercury to produce explosive mercury nitride.