answer:You’re close, but it’s not that they have one electron. Usually they need one electron (you can have species that need more, but one is more typical). The ‘Reactive’ bit comes from the fact that the energy of an electron drops significantly when it is paired. When the oxygen is down one electron, it has an odd number (7), and so one of them is unpaired. This unpaired one has a lot of energy, and grabbing another electron would allow it to pair and become less energetic. It’s that force, paired with oxygen’s normal affinity for electrons, that makes the molecule highly reactive. As for the number of electrons, you can actually have almost any number and have a radical (which is an unpaired electron, by the way). However, 7 is the most common and tends to have the higher reactivity.