Energy & Green Tech

The paints that eat pollutants and heat homes

Applying a coat of paint on the walls of a house may soon help to heat it, saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions. It could also clean the air that we breathe, breaking down chemicals and pollutants, and eliminating harmful ...

Engineering

New quantum sensing technique reveals magnetic connections

Say you notice a sudden drop in temperature on both your patio and kitchen thermometers. At first, you think it's because of a cold snap, so you crank up the heat in your home. Then you realize that while the outside has ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Smarter electronics a step closer with nanotech advance

As silicon-based technology reaches its absolute limits, a material engineered by University of Queensland researchers could herald the next generation of electronics with more memory, faster speeds and advanced features.

Electronics & Semiconductors

Sulfonamides make robust cathode material for proton batteries

Proton batteries are an innovative and environmentally friendly type of battery in which charge is carried by protons, which are positively charged hydrogen ions. A team of researchers has now developed organic sulfonamides ...

Energy & Green Tech

Car batteries can be frozen for safer transportation

Currently, transporting damaged and defective car batteries is an expensive process as they need to be placed in an explosion-proof box, which costs thousands of pounds. However, researchers from WMG at the University of ...

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Nitrogen

Nitrogen (pronounced /ˈnaɪtrədʒɨn/) is a chemical element that has the symbol N and atomic number 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78% by volume of Earth's atmosphere.

Many industrially important compounds, such as ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates (propellants and explosives), and cyanides, contain nitrogen. The extremely strong bond in elemental nitrogen dominates nitrogen chemistry, causing difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting the N2 into useful compounds, and releasing large amounts of energy when these compounds burn or decay back into nitrogen gas.

The element nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford, a Scottish physician, in 1772. Nitrogen occurs in all living organisms. It is a constituent element of amino acids and thus of proteins, and of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA). It resides in the chemical structure of almost all neurotransmitters, and is a defining component of alkaloids, biological molecules produced by many organisms.

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