The Incredible Discovery of the LEAST Reactive Elements (The Noble Gases)

scale to liquefy and fractionally distill air, but Britain's leading expert in this field was its opponent JEA. Instead, Ramsey turns to William Hamson with whom JEA was also in dispute now in 1895 Hamson patented. an innovative process for liquefying

gases

and licensed it to the Brin oxygen company, which later became the British oxygen industrial giant, now known as Bo Hamson gave Ramsay some advice and a liter of liquid air, for So Ramsey and his assistant Morris Travers set out to build their own distillation apparatus, many of them improvised from recycled equipment, at which point they had about 15 liters of isolated argon ready to liquefy and distill, but as they had It took months to accumulate that amount, they wanted to use the liquid air that Hamson gave them for some preliminary experiments to see if they could find something before risking their precious argon.

On May 30, 1998, they very carefully raised the temperature of the liquid air and let it most of it was boiled to see if the waste contained any

gases

not discovered after removal. oxygen and nitrogen from the leftover portion left them a small volume of an inert gas. The density of this sample was significantly higher than that of argon, suggesting that a heavier gas was mixed in and then examined spectroscopically. Ramsey said while showing the well-known spectrum of argon, two bright lines were also visible, one in the yellow part and the other in the green part of the spectrum, they gave this new inert gas the name Krypton from the Greek word that means hidden and has the same root as words like crypt or cryptic when discovering Krypton, they now felt confident to start investigating their 15 liters of argon to see if they could find something else.

A few days later, they got to work reducing their 15 liters of argon to a volume of about 11. cubic cm, just as with liquid air, they very slowly increased the temperature of the liquid argon and the first portion that boiled, in other In other words, the gas with the lowest boiling temperature was collected, this time its density was found to be significantly lower than that. of argon, indicating that it was made up of lighter atoms, and its spectrum was completely unique. Another new element had been discovered. They called it neon from the Greek word for new. It has the same root as words like Neolithic and Neoclassicism which kept in By performing countless fractionations of the portions they had already isolated over and over again, trying to separate something new, they finally discovered that if the Krypton fraction was isolated and pumped out slowly, It left a residue behind, this residue had a density even greater than that. of Krypton by indicating an even heavier atomic mass, they examined the spectrum of this residue and once again it was a new element, they called it Xenon from the Greek word meaning strange.

It has the same root as words like xenophobe and neon xenomorph. Krypton and Xenon were all shown to be monatomic and extremely un

reactive

, just like argon and helium, so within days Ramsay's inner gas brothers had become an entire family. Five new

elements

formed a new group on the periodic table. This was truly an amazing job in just a few years. Later, in 1902, Ramsey was knighted in 1904, Ry won the Nobel Prize in Physics and Ramsey won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, both in relation to his work on inert gases. They were the first Britons to receive these awards.

Now I would like to show why this second edition of Ramsay's book is so special? In his preface to the second edition dated December 1900, just 4 years after the publication of the first edition, he says the following from the publication of the first edition. Atmospheric air has been found to contain four other inactive gases belonging to the same class of

elements

as argon: helium, discovered by myself in 1895 in certain rare minerals, but separated from the atmosphere for the first time in 1900, and neon, krypton and xenon. Imagine you discover a new element, write a book about it, and then 4 years later you follow up with a second edition that now details the

discovery

of four more elements.

It was truly an

incredible

achievement, but the story does not end there a few years earlier, on December 21, 1898. Pierre and Mari C discovered a radioactive element that was later named radium. In 1900, a German physicist named Frederick Ern Dor noticed that radium compounds gave off a radioactive gas which he called radium emanation after a recent

discovery

by New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford, who had discovered that Thorium compounds also give off a radioactive gas. which he called thorium emanation. Shortly afterward, a French chemist named Andre Lou Dubian discovered actinium emanation. It was now discovered that all of these emanations, despite being radioactive, were extremely un

reactive

chemically, so they naturally attracted Ramsey's attention.

He was a master at isolating gases so he performed an experiment for 2 weeks where he isolated some radium emanation from radium bromide. He observed that its spectrum bore a striking resemblance in general character to the spectra of the gases of the Argon group. He suggested that this gas could belong to the same group as the recently discovered inert gases from it. In 1909, Ramsey published a paper in which he went into more detail about the properties of radium emanation when looking at trends in the properties of all previously discovered inert gases. This new gas seemed to fit perfectly as the heaviest element of the trend in a paper published in the French Academy of Sciences in 1910.

Ramsey suggested the name niton from the Latin word meaning to shine. Due to the luminescent properties of the gas, this name was initially accepted and is used by Ramsey throughout the world. fourth edition of his book, however, in the 192s, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which to this day standardized naming conventions in chemistry, selected the name radon after radium, the element where had discovered this emanation, at that time the concept of isotopes had also been adopted. It was discovered and determined that the thorium and actinium emanations were actually different isotopes of radon. Unfortunately, in these early days of radioactivity no one knew about the dangers of exposure to these substances.

Ramsey was one of those victims after a life of enormous contributions to chemistry. He died on July 23, 1916 of nasal cancer at the age of 63. Ramsey was a brilliant chemist whose work affects us to this day. The inert gases from it eventually became known as

noble

gases and their unique properties have given them various applications since their appearance. The discovery, for example, using an argon atmosphere allows modern scientists to carry out reactions that would otherwise be impossible in air. Liquid helium and neon are used as coolants for superconducting magnets and for medical imaging. Krypton is used in high-performance light bulbs.

Xenon is used as an ion propellant. For spacecraft, radon is used in radiotherapy to treat cancer patients, but perhaps the most obvious use of

noble

gases is as beautiful bright lights in glass tubes that illuminate city nights, so next time When you see a neon sign, pause and take a moment to appreciate it. the

incredible

work that was done to illuminate it, leave a comment below if you want me to make a video about the discovery of other elements and if you enjoyed this video I would really appreciate it if you subscribed, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time