Eminent chemists of our time . heric air andin the other from ammonia varied by about 6 in 1,200,or about percent, but the accuracy of the method didnot involve an error of more than percent. With that keen scent for any promising materialRamsay immediately took up the problem. Some yearsprevious he had found that nitrogen is absorbed fairlyreadily by magnesium. This suggested to him that byfirst getting rid of the oxygen in the air, and passingthe remaining nitrogen repeatedly over heated magne-sium, any other gas that might possibly be present inthe atmosphere would remain unabsorbe
Eminent chemists of our time . heric air andin the other from ammonia varied by about 6 in 1,200,or about percent, but the accuracy of the method didnot involve an error of more than percent. With that keen scent for any promising materialRamsay immediately took up the problem. Some yearsprevious he had found that nitrogen is absorbed fairlyreadily by magnesium. This suggested to him that byfirst getting rid of the oxygen in the air, and passingthe remaining nitrogen repeatedly over heated magne-sium, any other gas that might possibly be present inthe atmosphere would remain unabsorbed. This un-absorbed gas was isolated and found to give a charac-teristic spectrum. The name argon (Gk., inert) wasgiven to the newly discovered ingredient of the atmos-phere. It proved to be more refractory than the com-paratively inert nitrogen: it just simply would not makefriends and combine with any other element! Shortly after this, Ramsays attention was called tosome experiments of Hillebrandt, of the U. S. Geological 48. WILLIAM RAMSAY Survey, in which he obtained a gas believed to be nitro-gen from certain minerals, particularly one calledcleveite, but which was now suspected to contain argonas well. Ramsay lost no time. From it he obtainedargon, to be sure, but also another gas, with a spectrumall its own, which showed it to be identical with an ele-ment present in the chromosphere of the sun, and whichuntil then had been considered peculiar to the years ago gave the name helium to it, andnow Ramsay had rediscovered it on mother let the discoverer himself tell the exciting the 24th of March, 1895, he writes to his wife:4 Lets take the biggest piece of news first. I bottledthe new gas in a vacuum tube, and arranged so that Icould see its spectrum and that of argon in the samespectroscope at the same time. There is argon in thegas; but there was a magnificent yellow line, brilliantlybright, not coincident with but very close to the sodiumyel
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectchemistry, bookyear19
