• Question: Do you think oxygen could ran out some day? What could we do then?

    Asked by Mariah to Ceri, Marikka, Matt, Rob, Sally on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Sally Cutler

      Sally Cutler answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      I would turn to microbes to make some more! Amazing what you can do with biotechnology.

    • Photo: Robert Hampson

      Robert Hampson answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Oxygen is an element. The only element that escapes the Earth’s atmosphere is Helium. When we breath in Oxygen it is converted to Carbon Dioxide (dioxide means two atoms of oxygen). Plants can convert Carbon Dioxide back to oxygen. Oxygen also exists in many organic molecules, you are probably at least 10% oxygen. Water contains 2 molecules of hydrogen and one oxygen. There are many places we could go to increase the supply of raw oxygen is we start using it up too quickly.

    • Photo: Ceri Dare

      Ceri Dare answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      We use oxygen and turn it into carbon dioxide & some other stuff. Plants use carbon dioxide & turn it into oxygen & some other stuff.

      If we had too few plants it would be possible, but I think that the human race would have died out before then if we didn’t look after the plants – we’d have nothing to eat before we ran out of oxygen.

Comments