 Discovery Information
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| Who: Sir William Ramsay, M.W. Travers |
| When: 1898 |
| Where: England |
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| Name Origin
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| Greek: neos (new). |
| "Neon" in different languages. |
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| Sources
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| It can be prepared by liquification of air and separated from other elements by fractional distillation.
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| Neon is actually abundant on a universal scale: the fifth most abundant chemical element in the universe by mass, after hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and carbon. Its relative rarity on Earth, like that of helium, is due to its relative lightness and chemical inertness, both properties keeping it from being trapped in the condensing
gas and dust clouds of the formation of smaller and warmer solid planets like Earth.
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| Abundance
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| Universe: 1300 ppm (by weight) |
| Sun: 1000 ppm (by weight) |
| Atmosphere: 14 ppm |
| Earth's Crust: 3 x 10-3 ppm
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| Seawater: 1.2 x 10-4 ppm
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| Uses
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| In a vacuum tube, neon glows reddish orange, thus, the invention of neon lights. Neon has also been used to make lightening
arrestors, voltage detectors and TV tubes.
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| Liquefied neon is commercially used as an economical cryogenic refrigerant. |
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| History
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| Neon was discovered in 1898 by Scottish chemist William Ramsay and English chemist Morris W. Travers in London, England. Neon was discovered when Ramsay chilled a sample of the atmosphere until it became a liquid, then warmed
the liquid and captured the gases as they boiled off. The three gases were krypton, xenon, and neon.
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| Notes
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| While it is inert, there have been reports of it combining with fluorine. Neon may also form ions in combination with other noble gases (NeAr, HeNe, Ne2 and with hydrogen (NeH). It also forms an unstable hydrate, so it is not nearly as inert as one might think. In a vacuum discharge tube, neon
glows reddish orange. Of all the rare gases, the discharge of neon is the most intense at ordinary voltages and currents.
It is present in the atmosphere as 1 part in 65000.
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| Liquid neon has over 40 times more refrigerating capacity than liquid helium, and more than 3 times that of liquid hydrogen.
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