The Inert Gases

The discovery of inert gases read like a romance. The first of inert gases discovered was argon. In 1894 Lord Rayleigh observed that density of atmospheric "nitrogen was greater than that of a chemical gas", and asked chemists to suggest a reason.

Sir Wiliam Ramsay asked if he might collaborate. They found that Cavendish in 1785 had noted that atmospheric nitrogen yielded an inert residue, after it had sparked with excess oxygen, that could not combine with oxygen. Was this a new gas? Rayleigh and Ramsay accordingly passed atmospheric nitrogen over magnesium to remove the nitrogen as solid magnesium nitride, Mg₃N₂, and introduced the residual gas into a Plucker tube and examined its spectrum. To their joy, although the characteristic lines of nitrogen were present, there were also new red and green lines suggesting the presence of a new element. As Rayleigh and Ramsay knew that this new gas was present in the atmosphere the story goes that in veiw of its remarkable inactivity they decided that they would call it argon, a Greek word meaning inert.

In 1868 the Danish astronomer Janssen examined the sun's corona spectroscopically for the first time in history. He detected that there was a prominent yellow line close to, but not identical with, the sodium lines which, however, did not correspond to any known element. By that time they had already stated that every element had its own characteristic spectrum and scientists could detect it. The chemists therefore suggested that this new line was due to an element present in the sun, but not present terrestrially. By that time scientists had already determined that alkali metals gave line spectra therefore they decided that the new element was a metal too. They suggested to call it helium, a Greek word meaning sun.

Notes to the text:

corona– солнечная корона

accordingly– соответственно, таким образом

in view of– ввиду