Question: what is in the oxygen we breath?

Scott Melville answered on 13 Nov 2017:

Oxygen is a chemical element – but in the air around it exists in the form of molecules (so two oxygen atoms stuck together). So if you asked a chemist, they would say that the oxygen we breathe is just pairs of oxygen atoms 😛
Inside an oxygen atom there is a bunch of protons and neutrons (I forget how many) in the center, and some electrons whizzing around it. Inside the protons and neutrons are some particles called ‘quarks’, which are held together by ‘gluons’. We actually have no idea if there’s anything ‘inside’ an electron, quark or gluon (we believe that they’re indivisible), so that’s where my answer stops. But the Greeks believed that atoms were indivisible, and look how wrong they were 😉 Ask that question again in 100 years, and I guarantee that you’ll get a different answer 😀 (some people think that maybe there are tiny vibrating strings inside of the particles – but we really don’t know that for sure!)