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Argon is a chemical element and its atomic number is 18. Argon is
tasteless, colorless, odorless, and forms one percent of the earth's
atmosphere. Sir William Ramsay and Baron Rayleigh discovered argon in a
experiment. They removed all the nitrogen and oxygen from the air. The
heaviest gas that was remaining was argon, which was the first noble gas that
was discovered on Earth, and is most common out of all the noble gases. A major
portion of earthly argon has been produced in potassium-containing minerals by
the decay of rare, naturally radioactive isotope potassium-40. The gas slowly
leaks out into the atmosphere from the rocks and keeps producing. |
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In argons outermost shell it has eight electrons. This makes It very stable and chemically motionless. Argon atoms do not combine together and also have not been recorded to come together chemically with atoms of any other element. Argon gas condenses to a colorless liquid at -302.4 degrees fahrenheit, and to a solid at -308.9 degrees fahrenheit. The amount of argon that will dissolve in 100 volumes of water at a temperature of 53.6 degrees fahrenheit is 3.94 volumes of argon gas.
Sir William Ramsay, a British scientist best known for his work in the separation of elemental gases from the atmosphere. Ramsay worked as a professor of chemistry at the University of Bristol from 1880 to 1887 and at the University of London from 1887 until 1913. He was awarded with the 1904 Nobel Prize in chemistry. While looking for sources of argon in the mineral territory, Ramsay discovered helium in 1895. Besides argon, Ramsay also discovered neon, krypton, and xenon and contributed to the finding that helium is a product found by the breakup of radium.
