Neon is a colorless gas that glows reddish-orange when electricity runs through it. It’s a rare element that’s only found in the Earth’s atmosphere and in extremely small amounts in other places. It’s also a noble gas, which means that it doesn’t react with other elements or substances. Neon has the smallest liquid range of any of the noble gases, and it must be cooled to very low temperatures to become a liquid.
The discovery of neon was made in 1898 by two chemists, William Ramsay and Morris Travers, according to the website Chemicool. They discovered it during their experiments with liquefied air. It makes up only about 18 millionths of the Earth’s atmosphere and is also present in trace amounts on other planets. It is odorless and does not form compounds. It is classified as one of the noble gases because it is very stable and has filled valence shells (the outermost layer has the max number of electrons).
All of this allows neon to be used in signs that light up, which were first invented by Georges Claude in 1910. When a few thousand volts are applied to the neon in a tube, its atoms are “excited,” which causes them to emit orange/red light. When the tube is turned off, the atoms return to their ground state.
Neon is very rare and expensive on Earth. It is extracted from the atmosphere by a process called fractional distillation of liquefied air. It’s also combined with helium in Geiger counters and used as a cryogenic refrigerant. It is not hazardous in small amounts, but it can be a poison if inhaled in high concentrations, as it can displace oxygen in the lungs and cause asphyxiation.
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