If I have a bottle of oxygen placed open-mouthed on top of a open-mouthed bottle of air, what will happen?

Question

Does the air come up to the oxygen or vice versa?Or would they be about the same?

Answer 1

The Oxygen is heavier so it will fall, as the Nitrogen Rises

At the bottom of the bottle will be a mix of Argon, Carbon Dioxide, Nitrogen and Oxygen, but most of the Nitrogen will rise. The air won't sort itself out into layers, but some of the pure oxygen would displace the lighter Nitrogen. The gases don't sort themselves out by weight because air currents mix them. If the earth didn't rotate and the sun was too far away to heat the planet much then the gases would have time to sort themselves out form lightest to heaviest; Nitrogen over Oxygen, over Argon, over Water Vapor, over Carbon Dioxide.

The gases in our atmosphere are:
Nitrogen 78% bonded as N2 (which is the lightest)
Oxygen 20.95% bonded as 02 (which is slightly heavier)
Argon 0.93% free, which is over twice as heavy as Oxygen or Nitrogen so it is heavier.
Carbon Dioxide 0.038% (which is the heaviest gas)
Water Vapor <1% (H20 is lighter than CO2)

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_atmosphere
"Earth's atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth and retained by the Earth's gravity. It contains roughly (by molar content/volume) 78% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide; trace amounts of other gases, and a variable amount (average around 1%) of water vapor. This mixture of gases is commonly known as air. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation and reducing temperature extremes between day and night.

Answer 2

Well, they are about the same, but here are the numbers.

Air is approximately 20% oxygen (32 g/mol) and 80% nitrogen (28 g/mol). Therefore the air is about 28.8 g/mol, compared with 32 g/mol for pure oxygen.

Since pure oxygen is slightly more dense than normal air, the oxygen molecules will diffuse downward into the air bottle. Over time, the bottle of air would contain a higher percentage of oxygen. (Higher than 20%, that is)

Answer 3

Basically the rate at which they mix is determined more by the temperature of the gasses than the actual composition - at a given temperature, the molecules of oxygen, which is slightly heavier than the nitrogen that makes up air, will move more slowly, so the nitrogen will diffuse slightly faster.

Answer 4

The oxygen would infiltrate the air, and eventually both bottles would have the same oxygen/air content.

Answer 5

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