Headings Noble
Gases Search Questions 
The Noble Gases - Discovery.
The noble gas helium
was first observed
as a line in the emission
spectrum of the Sun.
It was named after the Greek word for Sun,
which is helios.
The other noble gases
(except helium) were discovered
by
Rayleigh and Ramsey in
the second half of the 19th century.
They found that a sample of pure
nitrogen from a chemical reaction
had a different density
from a sample of normal
air.
They reasoned that air must have other
gases mixed in with it
and using fractional
distillation they discovered first argon
and then neon, krypton
and xenon.
Headings Noble
Gases Search Questions
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