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Nitrogen compounds play important roles in biological and atmospheric chemistry. This column enables you to become more familiar with the structure and reactivity of some of these compounds.
Molecular nitrogen, N2, is an inert gas (Figure 1) and makes up nearly 80% of the Earth’s atmosphere. It is only in the upper atmosphere (altitudes higher than 100 km) that this gas becomes more reactive, where significant levels of very short wavelength radiation can be found (80–100 nm) that can break the N–N bond through photolysis.
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