- Nitrogen is odorless, tasteless, and colorless.
- Nitrogen gas (N2) makes up 78.1% of the volume of the Earth’s air.
- Nitrogen is a nonmetal.
- Nitrogen gas is relatively inert, but soil bacteria can 'fix' nitrogen into a form that plants and animals can use to make amino acids and proteins.
- The French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier named nitrogen azote, meaning without life.
- Nitrogen was sometimes referred to as 'burnt' or 'dephlogisticated' air.
- Nitrogen compounds are found in foods, fertilizers, poisons, and explosives.
- Nitrogen is responsible for the orange-red, blue-green, blue-violet, and deep violet colors of the aurora.
- One way to prepare nitrogen gas is by liquefaction and fractional distillation from the atmosphere.
- Nitrogen has a valence of 3 or 5.
Image of solid, liquid, and gaseous nitrogen.
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