Discovery date : 1898
Discovered by: Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers
Origin of the name: The name comes from the Greek 'neos', meaning new.
Allotropes : -----
~>NEON is a chemical element with symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air.
| FACT BOX | |||
| Group | 18 | Melting point | −248.59°C, −415.46°F, 24.56 K |
| Period | 2 | Boiling point | −246.046°C, −410.883°F, 27.104 K |
| Block | p | Density (g cm−3) | 0.000825 |
| Atomic number | 10 | Relative atomic mass | 20.180 |
| State at 20°C | Gas | Key isotopes | 20Ne |
| Electron configuration | [He] 2s22p6 | CAS number | 7440-01-9 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22377 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
In 1898, William Ramsay and Morris Travers at University College London isolated krypton gas by evaporating liquid argon. They had been expecting to find a lighter gas which would fit a niche above argon in the periodic table of the elements. They then repeated their experiment, this time allowing solid argon to evaporate slowly under reduced pressure and collected the gas which came off first. This time they were successful, and when they put a sample of the new gas into their atomic spectrometer it startled them by the brilliant red glow that we now associate with neon signs. Ramsay named the new gas neon, basing it on neos, the Greek word for new.