The Chemistry Book

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Neon is a noble gas discovered by Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist, in 1898. ^[1] with the help of his student, an English chemist, named Morris W. Travers. Ramsay discovered the element Neon when he chilled a bit of the atmosphere. He did this until it liquefied, then he began to warm up the liquid until it became a gas. From that gas he realized there were actually three gases, they were krypton, xenon, and Neon. After that the French engineer Georges Claude made a lamp from an electrified tube of the Neon gas in 1910. By 1915, Claude was selling his Neon light tubes to many U.S. companies.

Common Uses

Neon is most commonly known for its use in Neon signs.^[1] Neon gives off a reddish orange light, when used in a vacuum discharge tube with electricity channeling through it. Neon is also used in lightning arrestors, high-voltage indicators, helium-neon lasers , television tubes, Gieger Counters, and wave meter tubes. In some refrigerators that need to reach low temperatures, liquid Neon is used. It is becoming more common to use Neon in refrigerators because it has over 40 times the refrigerating ability per unit than that of liquid Helium and more than three times liquid Hydrogen However Neon is not usually used in experiments because liquid Neon is quite expensive. It is expensive, not because of the Liquefaction process it must go through, but because of its rarity in the gas form.^[2]

Facts

Neon is the fifth most abundant chemical element in the universe ^[3], however it is a ridiculously small part of our atmosphere here on earth. "Neon is a very inert element," says Mollie Boorman, of www. periodic.lanl.gov, "however it has been reported to form a compound with fluorine." Scientists still don't know whether or not true compounds of Neon exist, but evidence is coming together in favor of their existence.^[4]Neon is also used for particle detection for high-energy physics research.^[5] Neon was discovered by Sir William Ramsay and Morris M. Travers. Neon (Ne) is an element derived from liquid air. Its name comes from the Greek word Neos meaning "new one". ^[6] Neon is found in very small quantities throughout the atmosphere, and gives off a reddish orangey glow when electricity passes through it. It is used widely for commercial purposes, as well as for high voltage indicators. Neon can be found in group 8A on the periodic table, also known known as the noble gas group. ^[7] Neon's melting point is 24.48 and the boiling point is 27.10.

Isotopes

The three stable isotopes of neon are 20Ne (90.48%), 21Ne (0.27%) and 22Ne (9.25%). These three isotopes are all found to make up Neon the way it is naturally found throughout the universe. There are six other known isotopes which are unstable.

References

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