• Question: how do we get oxygen ?

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      Asked by esra to Anais, katy, Lauren, Richard, Stuart on 9 Mar 2016.
      • Photo: Lauren Laing

        Lauren Laing answered on 9 Mar 2016:

        Oxygen makes up approximately 21% of the atmosphere. Oxygen is brought into the body via the lungs when we breathe in. This is then transported by the red blood cells to the entire body. Every cell in your body uses a process called respiration in order to release energy for the cell to grow and repair. During the process of respiration, oxygen is needed to burn the fuels in the cell (sugars and fats) in order to produce this energy.

      • Photo: Anais Kahve

        Anais Kahve answered on 9 Mar 2016:

        I think Lauren has summed it up! We get oxygen by breathing in. Luckily we don’t have to think about breathing, it’s happens automatically.

      • Photo: Richard Friend

        Richard Friend answered on 9 Mar 2016:

        We get oxygen from the plants that use photosynthesis to get their energy. Trees are usually said to do this the most, but I heard somewhere that sea algae generates a lot of it. Ultimately though, the oxygen atoms were formed in the heart of a star, by fusing together hydrogen atoms. All of the individual atoms that make up everything in the universe (including you) were made in a star! Awesome, eh?

      • Photo: Stuart Atkinson

        Stuart Atkinson answered on 9 Mar 2016:

        Oxygen comes from the air around us. We breath it in into our lungs and the really clever bit is how the gas gets into the blood to go around the body. The air chambers get finer and finer until they are so thin that the oxygen can pass through them directly into the blood. Also, waste gas (carbon dioxide) can pass the other way to be breathed out. Oxygen is carried to cells in the body where it combines with food that you’ve eaten, and it’s basically burned there to create energy. You’ve probably seen this equation before:

        C6H12O6 (sugar) + 6O2 (oxygen)—> 6CO2 (carbon dioxide) + 6H2O (water)

        As Richard says, oxygen is produced through photosynthesis in green plants (the process is the reverse of the above equation). So they are able to take our waste products (carbon dioxide and water) and using sunlight turn them into food and oxygen.

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