Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2019 January 1

= January 1 =

Are large rings of pure oxygen possible?
What about this? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:32, 1 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Solid oxygen describes allotropes of four and eight oxygen atoms per molecule. The graphic you have is some sort of crown ether, but with all those oxygens on each carbon atom (gem-diol) I would be very skeptical about its stability. Wnt (talk) 20:59, 1 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Long chains of oxygen are endothermic at standard pressures. Energy is released to make dioxygen. They may be stable at low temperature. Trioxygen difluoride and bis(trifluoromethyl) trioxide both exist. For your "what about" there are organic esters of tricarbonate. Your structure will rapidly turn into water and carbon dioxide unless you can freeze it. Under high pressure carbon dioxide may behave more like silica. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:04, 1 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Cyclic and linear polymers of -CH2-O- are known (see polyoxymethylene and Formaldehyde). Various analogs with chains or functional groups instead of the H on the C are known also, but gem-diols (especially the hydrate of a carbonate ester) are quite unstable. DMacks (talk) 14:37, 2 January 2019 (UTC)