# Physical properties of liquid and solid Oxygen

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physical-properties-of-liquid-and-solid-oxygen/256075>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 20, 2004, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physical-properties-of-liquid-and-solid-oxygen/256075 "2004-07-20T22:10:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2004, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physical-properties-of-liquid-and-solid-oxygen/256075/1 "2004-07-20T22:10:28Z")

</div>

1. What sort of solid is frozen oxygen? For that matter, how do you classify elemental carbon, nitrogen, sulfur or phosphorus, other than the extremely broad category"non-metallic"? I don’t think it’s technically a salt or a ceramic, and with the exception of carbon I don’t think they’re covalent crystals.

2. Will liquid oxygen and liquid methane dissolve in each other, or are they immiscible ? Methane is a hydrocarbon, but I don’t know how liquid oxygen should be classified (see #1.)

3. My Encyclopedia Britannica claims that oxygen is attracted by magnets “in all it’s phases”. Huh? I thought no true liquid could be attracted by a magnet. I remember seeing a photo showing a lump of solid oxygen on a string being pulled by a magnet; but I thought most paramagnetic substances had a very weak response compared to iron. Can someone give me the hard numbers for oxygen?