Have you heard some fun facts about neon? Let’s explore together!

Do you know what is neon and its story? In this essay, we will tell you the fun facts about neon and introduce its widespread use in different fields.

A simple introduction to neon

Before talking about the fun facts about neon, we will simply introduce neon first. Neon is an odorless and colorless inert gas that is orange-red when discharged. The air contains a small amount of neon, which is often used in neon lights. Belongs to the zero group element, chemical properties are not active. 

Inert gases are difficult to carry out chemical reactions because the outermost shells of electrons orbiting around the nucleus are full, so these gases have no incentive to exchange electrons with other elements. This results in almost no compounds made from noble gases. 

According to a national electron accelerator laboratory in the United States, neon can form compounds with fluorine under certain laboratory conditions, but it will not react in other conditions. Can't wait to listen to the fun facts about neon already? The following information will tell you the fun story.

Fun facts about neon

William Lassem, a Scottish chemist, discovered argon in 1894 and first isolated helium in 1895. From the positions of these elements on the periodic table, he inferred that there were unknown elements between the two noble gases. So he tries many ways to get these unknown elements.

With the help of Travers, another chemist, Lassem turned a one-liter dose of air into a liquid gas at below 215 degrees Celsius and vaporized it. At last, he got 25 milliliters of volatile gas. He collected these volatiles and found that they had an extremely magnificent spectrum, with many red and green lines, which were still significant under high vacuum.

"The deep red light emitted from the vacuum tube is so beautiful that people who have seen it will never forget. Our two years of hard work are not in vain." Travers exclaimed. The unknown element was discovered, but how to name it? When a heated discussion was on, Lassem's 13-year-old son, Willie, came to the lab to seek equipment. After listening to their conversation, Willie said, "Since this strange gas is a discovery, why not use the Greek word ‘Neve’ that means novel?"

"That makes sense. But we can change it to the synonym ‘Neon’ to make it sound better. It's a beautiful gas to be worthy of the name." Lassem said. Of course, Travers had no objection. On the nail, they named the element Neon, or Ne for short. Later, Chinese scientists translated this element into "neon" when Western chemistry was introduced to China.

Neon, which is one of the night light sources, is versatile

After introducing the fun facts about neon, we also want to give a presentation about the wide use of neon.

Lassem did not expect that the luminous properties of noble gases would determine that they would play a key role in urban nightscape decoration. Neon is made by filling a glass tube with neon gas to make a deep red neon lamp, argon is made a light blue argon lamp, and helium is made an orange helium lamp. Neon, argon, helium and other gases are mixed in different proportions and then loaded into the closed tube, to make a colorful neon lamp. 

The world's first neon light advertisement was for a small barbershop on the Rue Montmartre in Paris, France, in 1912. It should be noted that for a long time, people thought that Neon "lit" neon light, because neon light in English is "neon", meaning neon gas.

Besides neon light, neon also plays an important role in the fields of transportation, the electronics industry, aviation and navigation, and scientific research. Neon light can be used in airports, ports and other places on the principle of strong light, through thick fog. In high-energy physics, neon filled with sparks can be used to detect the paths of particles. In deep water operations, to prevent diving sickness, neon gas can be used instead of nitrogen to make a special breathing mixture for deep sea operations.

Conclusion:

In the end, we want to conclude the topic of "fun facts about neon". We have to say that the discovery of neon is indeed a magical process, of course, but also thanks to the unremitting efforts of scientists, which is worth learning for us. Through this article, we can also understand the important application of neon in many fields. Therefore, whether it is the discovery of new elements or the discovery of new technology, it has a significant impact on people's lives.