Pauli exclusion principle
The Pauli exclusion principle is the quantum mechanical principle which states that two or more identical fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state within a quantum system simultaneously. This principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 for electrons, extended to all fermions with his spin–statistics theorem of 1940. In the case of electrons in atoms, it can be stated as follows: it is impossible for two electrons of a poly-electron atom to have the same values of the four quantum numbers: n, the principal quantum number, ℓ, the angular momentum quantum number, mℓ, the magnetic quantum number, ms, the spin quantum number. For example, if two electrons reside in the same orbital, if their n, ℓ, mℓ values are the same their ms must be different, thus the electrons must have opposite half-integer spin projections of 1/2 and −1/2. Particles with an integer spin, or bosons, are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle: any number of identical bosons can occupy the same quantum state, as with, for instance, photons produced by a laser or atoms in a Bose–Einstein condensate.
A more rigorous statement is that with respect to exchange of two identical particles the total wave function is antisymmetric for fermions, symmetric for bosons. This means that if the space and spin co-ordinates of two identical particles are interchanged the wave function changes its sign for fermions and does not change for bosons; the Pauli exclusion principle describes the behavior of all fermions, while bosons are subject to other principles. Fermions include elementary particles such as quarks and neutrinos. Additionally, baryons such as protons and neutrons and some atoms are fermions, are therefore described by the Pauli exclusion principle as well. Atoms can have different overall "spin", which determines whether they are fermions or bosons — for example helium-3 has spin 1/2 and is therefore a fermion, in contrast to helium-4 which has spin 0 and is a boson; as such, the Pauli exclusion principle underpins many properties of everyday matter, from its large-scale stability, to the chemical behavior of atoms.
"Half-integer spin" means that the intrinsic angular momentum value of fermions is ℏ = h / 2 π times a half-integer. In the theory of quantum mechanics fermions are described by antisymmetric states. In contrast, particles with integer spin have symmetric wave functions. Bosons include the photon, the Cooper pairs which are responsible for superconductivity, the W and Z bosons. In the early 20th century it became evident that atoms and molecules with numbers of electrons are more chemically stable than those with odd numbers of electrons. In the 1916 article "The Atom and the Molecule" by Gilbert N. Lewis, for example, the third of his six postulates of chemical behavior states that the atom tends to hold an number of electrons in any given shell, to hold eight electrons which are arranged symmetrically at the eight corners of a cube. In 1919 chemist Irving Langmuir suggested that the periodic table could be explained if the electrons in an atom were connected or clustered in some manner. Groups of electrons were thought to occupy a set of electron shells around the nucleus.
In 1922, Niels Bohr updated his model of the atom by assuming that certain numbers of electrons corresponded to stable "closed shells". Pauli looked for an explanation for these numbers. At the same time he was trying to explain experimental results of the Zeeman effect in atomic spectroscopy and in ferromagnetism, he found an essential clue in a 1924 paper by Edmund C. Stoner, which pointed out that, for a given value of the principal quantum number, the number of energy levels of a single electron in the alkali metal spectra in an external magnetic field, where all degenerate energy levels are separated, is equal to the number of electrons in the closed shell of the noble gases for the same value of n; this led Pauli to realize that the complicated numbers of electrons in closed shells can be reduced to the simple rule of one electron per state, if the electron states are defined using four quantum numbers. For this purpose he introduced a new two-valued quantum number, identified by Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck as electron spin.
The Pauli exclusion principle with a single-valued many-particle wavefunction is equivalent to requiring the wavefunction to be antisymmetric with respect to exchange. An antisymmetric two-particle state is represented as a sum of states in which one particle is in state | x ⟩ and the other in state | y ⟩, is given by: | ψ ⟩ = ∑ x, y A | x, y ⟩, antisymmetry under exchange means that A = −A; this implies A = 0 when x = y, Pauli exclusion. It is true in any basis. Conver
Chlorine
Chlorine is a chemical element with symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are intermediate between them. Chlorine is a yellow-green gas at room temperature, it is an reactive element and a strong oxidising agent: among the elements, it has the highest electron affinity and the third-highest electronegativity on the Pauling scale, behind only oxygen and fluorine. The most common compound of chlorine, sodium chloride, has been known since ancient times. Around 1630, chlorine gas was first synthesised in a chemical reaction, but not recognised as a fundamentally important substance. Carl Wilhelm Scheele wrote a description of chlorine gas in 1774, supposing it to be an oxide of a new element. In 1809, chemists suggested that the gas might be a pure element, this was confirmed by Sir Humphry Davy in 1810, who named it from Ancient Greek: χλωρός, translit. Khlôros, lit.'pale green' based on its colour.
Because of its great reactivity, all chlorine in the Earth's crust is in the form of ionic chloride compounds, which includes table salt. It is the second-most abundant halogen and twenty-first most abundant chemical element in Earth's crust; these crustal deposits are dwarfed by the huge reserves of chloride in seawater. Elemental chlorine is commercially produced from brine by electrolysis; the high oxidising potential of elemental chlorine led to the development of commercial bleaches and disinfectants, a reagent for many processes in the chemical industry. Chlorine is used in the manufacture of a wide range of consumer products, about two-thirds of them organic chemicals such as polyvinyl chloride, many intermediates for the production of plastics and other end products which do not contain the element; as a common disinfectant, elemental chlorine and chlorine-generating compounds are used more directly in swimming pools to keep them clean and sanitary. Elemental chlorine at high concentrations is dangerous and poisonous for all living organisms, was used in World War I as the first gaseous chemical warfare agent.
In the form of chloride ions, chlorine is necessary to all known species of life. Other types of chlorine compounds are rare in living organisms, artificially produced chlorinated organics range from inert to toxic. In the upper atmosphere, chlorine-containing organic molecules such as chlorofluorocarbons have been implicated in ozone depletion. Small quantities of elemental chlorine are generated by oxidation of chloride to hypochlorite in neutrophils as part of the immune response against bacteria; the most common compound of chlorine, sodium chloride, has been known since ancient times. Its importance in food was well known in classical antiquity and was sometimes used as payment for services for Roman generals and military tribunes. Elemental chlorine was first isolated around 1200 with the discovery of aqua regia and its ability to dissolve gold, since chlorine gas is one of the products of this reaction: it was however not recognised as a new substance. Around 1630, chlorine was recognized as a gas by the Flemish chemist and physician Jan Baptist van Helmont.
The element was first studied in detail in 1774 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, he is credited with the discovery. Scheele produced chlorine by reacting MnO2 with HCl: 4 HCl + MnO2 → MnCl2 + 2 H2O + Cl2Scheele observed several of the properties of chlorine: the bleaching effect on litmus, the deadly effect on insects, the yellow-green color, the smell similar to aqua regia, he called it "dephlogisticated muriatic acid air" since it is a gas and it came from hydrochloric acid. He failed to establish chlorine as an element. Common chemical theory at that time held that an acid is a compound that contains oxygen, so a number of chemists, including Claude Berthollet, suggested that Scheele's dephlogisticated muriatic acid air must be a combination of oxygen and the yet undiscovered element, muriaticum. In 1809, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thénard tried to decompose dephlogisticated muriatic acid air by reacting it with charcoal to release the free element muriaticum, they did not succeed and published a report in which they considered the possibility that dephlogisticated muriatic acid air is an element, but were not convinced.
In 1810, Sir Humphry Davy tried the same experiment again, concluded that the substance was an element, not a compound. He announced his results to the Royal Society on 15 November that year. At that time, he named this new element "chlorine", from the Greek word χλωρος, meaning green-yellow; the name "halogen", meaning "salt producer", was used for chlorine in 1811 by Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger. This term was used as a generic term to describe all the elements in the chlorine family, after a suggestion by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1826. In 1823, Michael Faraday liquefied chlorine for the first time, demonstrated that what was known as "solid chlorine" had a structure of chlorine hydrate. Chlorine gas was first used by French chemist Claude Berthollet to bleach textiles in 1785. Modern bleaches resulted from further work by Berthollet, who first produced sodium hypochlorite in 1789 in his laboratory in the town of Javel, by passing chlorine gas through a solution of sodium carbonate; the resulting liqu
Electronic correlation
Electronic correlation is the interaction between electrons in the electronic structure of a quantum system. The correlation energy is a measure of how much the movement of one electron is influenced by the presence of all other electrons. Within the Hartree–Fock method of quantum chemistry, the antisymmetric wave function is approximated by a single Slater determinant. Exact wave functions, cannot be expressed as single determinants; the single-determinant approximation does not take into account Coulomb correlation, leading to a total electronic energy different from the exact solution of the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation within the Born–Oppenheimer approximation. Therefore, the Hartree–Fock limit is always above this exact energy; the difference is called a term coined by Löwdin. The concept of the correlation energy was studied earlier by Wigner. A certain amount of electron correlation is considered within the HF approximation, found in the electron exchange term describing the correlation between electrons with parallel spin.
This basic correlation prevents two parallel-spin electrons from being found at the same point in space and is called Fermi correlation. Coulomb correlation, on the other hand, describes the correlation between the spatial position of electrons due to their Coulomb repulsion, is responsible for chemically important effects such as London dispersion. There is a correlation related to the overall symmetry or total spin of the considered system; the word correlation energy has to be used with caution. First it is defined as the energy difference of a correlated method relative to the Hartree–Fock energy, but this is not the full correlation energy because some correlation is included in HF. Secondly the correlation energy is dependent on the basis set used; the "exact" energy is the energy with full basis set. Electron correlation is sometimes divided into non-dynamical correlation. Dynamical correlation is the correlation of the movement of electrons and is described under electron correlation dynamics and with the configuration interaction method.
Static correlation is important for molecules where the ground state is well described only with more than one degenerate determinant. In this case the Hartree–Fock wavefunction is qualitatively wrong; the multi-configurational self-consistent field method takes account of this static correlation, but not dynamical correlation. If one wants to calculate excitation energies one has to be careful that both states are balanced. In simple terms the molecular orbitals of the Hartree–Fock method are optimized by evaluating the energy of an electron in each molecular orbital moving in the mean field of all other electrons, rather than including the instantaneous repulsion between electrons. To account for electron correlation there are many post-Hartree–Fock methods, including: configuration interaction One of the most important methods for correcting for the missing correlation is the configuration interaction method. Starting with the Hartree–Fock wavefunction as the ground determinant, one takes a linear combination of the ground and excited determinants Φ I as the correlated wavefunction and optimizes the weighting factors c I according to the Variational Principle.
When taking all possible excited determinants one speaks of Full-CI. In a Full-CI wavefunction all electrons are correlated. For non-small molecules Full-CI is much too computationally expensive. One truncates the CI expansion and gets well-correlated wavefunctions and well-correlated energies according to the level of truncation. Møller–Plesset perturbation theory Perturbation theory gives correlated energies, but no new wavefunctions. PT is not variational; this means. It is possible to partition Møller–Plesset perturbation theory energies via Interacting Quantum Atoms energy partitioning; this is an extension to the theory of Atoms in Molecules. IQA energy partitioning enables one to look in detail at the correlation energy contributions from individual atoms and atomic interactions. IQA correlation energy partitioning has been shown to be possible with coupled cluster methods. Multi-configurational self-consistent field There are combinations possible. E.g. one can have some nearly degenerate determinants for the multi-configurational self-consistent field method to account for static correlation and/or some truncated CI method for the biggest part of dynamical correlation and/or on top some perturbational ansatz for small perturbing determinants.
Examples for those combinations are CASPT2 and SORCI. In condensed matter physics, electrons are described with reference to a periodic lattice of atomic nuclei. Non-interacting electrons are therefore described by Bloch waves, which correspond to the delocalized, symmetry adapted molecular orbitals used in molecules. A number of important theoretical approximations have been proposed to explain electron correlations in these crystalline systems; the Fermi liquid model of correlated electrons in metals is able to explain the temperature dependence of resistivity by electron-electron interactions. It forms the basis for the BCS theory of superconductivity, the result of phonon-mediated electron-electron
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with elements and compounds composed of atoms and ions: their composition, properties and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other substances. In the scope of its subject, chemistry occupies an intermediate position between physics and biology, it is sometimes called the central science because it provides a foundation for understanding both basic and applied scientific disciplines at a fundamental level. For example, chemistry explains aspects of plant chemistry, the formation of igneous rocks, how atmospheric ozone is formed and how environmental pollutants are degraded, the properties of the soil on the moon, how medications work, how to collect DNA evidence at a crime scene. Chemistry addresses topics such as how atoms and molecules interact via chemical bonds to form new chemical compounds. There are four types of chemical bonds: covalent bonds, in which compounds share one or more electron; the word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to an earlier set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, philosophy, astronomy and medicine.
It is seen as linked to the quest to turn lead or another common starting material into gold, though in ancient times the study encompassed many of the questions of modern chemistry being defined as the study of the composition of waters, growth, disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies by the early 4th century Greek-Egyptian alchemist Zosimos. An alchemist was called a'chemist' in popular speech, the suffix "-ry" was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as "chemistry"; the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία; this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, in turn derived from the word Kemet, the ancient name of Egypt in the Egyptian language. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning "cast together"; the current model of atomic structure is the quantum mechanical model. Traditional chemistry starts with the study of elementary particles, molecules, metals and other aggregates of matter.
This matter can be studied in isolation or in combination. The interactions and transformations that are studied in chemistry are the result of interactions between atoms, leading to rearrangements of the chemical bonds which hold atoms together; such behaviors are studied in a chemistry laboratory. The chemistry laboratory stereotypically uses various forms of laboratory glassware; however glassware is not central to chemistry, a great deal of experimental chemistry is done without it. A chemical reaction is a transformation of some substances into one or more different substances; the basis of such a chemical transformation is the rearrangement of electrons in the chemical bonds between atoms. It can be symbolically depicted through a chemical equation, which involves atoms as subjects; the number of atoms on the left and the right in the equation for a chemical transformation is equal. The type of chemical reactions a substance may undergo and the energy changes that may accompany it are constrained by certain basic rules, known as chemical laws.
Energy and entropy considerations are invariably important in all chemical studies. Chemical substances are classified in terms of their structure, phase, as well as their chemical compositions, they can be analyzed using the tools of e.g. spectroscopy and chromatography. Scientists engaged in chemical research are known as chemists. Most chemists specialize in one or more sub-disciplines. Several concepts are essential for the study of chemistry; the particles that make up matter have rest mass as well – not all particles have rest mass, such as the photon. Matter can be a mixture of substances; the atom is the basic unit of chemistry. It consists of a dense core called the atomic nucleus surrounded by a space occupied by an electron cloud; the nucleus is made up of positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons, while the electron cloud consists of negatively charged electrons which orbit the nucleus. In a neutral atom, the negatively charged electrons balance out the positive charge of the protons.
The nucleus is dense. The atom is the smallest entity that can be envisaged to retain the chemical properties of the element, such as electronegativity, ionization potential, preferred oxidation state, coordination number, preferred types of bonds to form. A chemical element is a pure substance, composed of a single type of atom, characterized by its particular number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms, known as the atomic number and represented by the symbol Z; the mass number is the sum of the number of neutrons in a nucleus. Although all the nuclei of all atoms belonging to one element will have the same
Electron shell
In chemistry and atomic physics, an electron shell, or a principal energy level, may be thought of as an orbit followed by electrons around an atom's nucleus. The closest shell to the nucleus is called the "1 shell", followed by the "2 shell" the "3 shell", so on farther and farther from the nucleus; the shells correspond with the principal quantum numbers or are labeled alphabetically with letters used in the X-ray notation. Each shell can contain only a fixed number of electrons: The first shell can hold up to two electrons, the second shell can hold up to eight electrons, the third shell can hold up to 18 and so on; the general formula is. Since electrons are electrically attracted to the nucleus, an atom's electrons will occupy outer shells only if the more inner shells have been filled by other electrons. However, this is not a strict requirement: atoms may have two or three incomplete outer shells. For an explanation of why electrons exist in these shells see electron configuration; the electrons in the outermost occupied shell determine the chemical properties of the atom.
Each shell consists of one or more subshells, each subshell consists of one or more atomic orbitals. The shell terminology comes from Arnold Sommerfeld's modification of the Bohr model. Sommerfeld retained Bohr's planetary model, but added mildly elliptical orbits to explain the fine spectroscopic structure of some elements; the multiple electrons with the same principal quantum number had close orbits that formed a "shell" of positive thickness instead of the infinitely thin circular orbit of Bohr's model. The existence of electron shells was first observed experimentally in Charles Barkla's and Henry Moseley's X-ray absorption studies. Barkla labeled them with the letters K, L, M, N, O, P, Q; the origin of this terminology was alphabetic. A "J" series was suspected, though experiments indicated that the K absorption lines are produced by the innermost electrons; these letters were found to correspond to the n values 1, 2, 3, etc. They are used in the spectroscopic Siegbahn notation; the physical chemist Gilbert Lewis was responsible for much of the early development of the theory of the participation of valence shell electrons in chemical bonding.
Linus Pauling generalized and extended the theory while applying insights from quantum mechanics. The electron shells are labeled K, L, M, N, O, P, Q. Electrons in outer shells have higher average energy and travel farther from the nucleus than those in inner shells; this makes them more important in determining how the atom reacts chemically and behaves as a conductor, because the pull of the atom's nucleus upon them is weaker and more broken. In this way, a given element's reactivity is dependent upon its electronic configuration; each shell is composed of one or more subshells. For example, the first shell has one subshell, called 1s; the various possible subshells are shown in the following table: The first column is the "subshell label", a lowercase-letter label for the type of subshell. For example, the "4s subshell" is a subshell of the fourth shell, with the type described in the first row; the second column is the azimuthal quantum number of the subshell. The precise definition involves quantum mechanics, but it is a number that characterizes the subshell.
The third column is the maximum number of electrons. For example, the top row says. In each case the figure is 4 greater than the one above it; the fourth column says. For example, looking at the top two rows, every shell has an s subshell, while only the second shell and higher have a p subshell; the final column gives the historical origin of the labels s, p, d, f. They come from early studies of atomic spectral lines; the other labels, namely g, h and i, are an alphabetic continuation following the last originated label of f. Although it is stated that all the electrons in a shell have the same energy, this is an approximation. However, the electrons in one subshell do have the same level of energy, with subshells having more energy per electron than earlier ones; this effect is great enough. Each subshell is constrained to hold 4ℓ + 2 electrons at most, namely: Each s subshell holds at most 2 electrons Each p subshell holds at most 6 electrons Each d subshell holds at most 10 electrons Each f subshell holds at most 14 electrons Each g subshell holds at most 18 electronsTherefore, the K shell, which contains only an s subshell, can hold up to 2 electrons.
Although that formula gives the maximum in principle, in fact that maximum is only achieved for the first four shells (K, L, M
Calorie
The calorie is a unit of energy. The Calorie is 1,000 calories; that capital C, distinguishing Calorie from calorie, is a long-established scientific convention but is not always understood more widely. Where the context is about food and exercise, the term appears without the capital C; the Calorie is termed the large calorie or kilocalorie — symbols: Cal, kcal — or food calorie, defined as the heat energy involved in warming one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. The small calorie was defined as the heat energy to raise the temperature of one gram of water — rather than a kilogram — by the same amount. Although both units relate to the metric system, they have been considered obsolete, or deprecated, in scientific usage, since the adoption of the SI system, but the small calorie is still used in laboratory measurements and calculations, with the values thus established being reported in kilocalories. The calorie was first defined by Nicolas Clément in 1824 as a unit of heat energy, it entered French and English dictionaries between 1841 and 1867.
The word comes from Latin calor, meaning'heat'. The small calorie was introduced by Pierre Antoine Favre and Johann T. Silbermann in 1852. In 1879, Marcellin Berthelot introduced the convention of capitalizing the large Calorie to distinguish the senses; the use of the calorie for nutrition was introduced to the American public by Wilbur Olin Atwater, a professor at Wesleyan University, in 1887. The alternate spelling calory is archaic; the energy needed to increase the temperature of a given mass of water by 1 °C depends on the atmospheric pressure and the starting temperature. Accordingly, several different precise definitions of the calorie have been used; the pressure is taken to be the standard atmospheric pressure. The temperature increase can be expressed as one kelvin, which means the same as an increment of one degree Celsius; the two definitions most common in older literature appear to be the 15 °C calorie and the thermochemical calorie. Until 1948, the latter was defined as 4.1833 international joules.
The calorie was first defined to measure energy in the form of heat in experimental calorimetry. In a nutritional context, the kilojoule is the SI unit of food energy, although the kilocalorie is still in common use; the word calorie is popularly used with the number of kilocalories of nutritional energy measured. To avoid confusion, it is sometimes written Calorie to make the distinction, although this is not understood. To facilitate comparison, specific energy or energy density figures are quoted as "calories per serving" or "kilocalories per 100 g". A nutritional requirement or consumption is expressed in calories per day. One gram of fat in food contains nine calories, while a gram of either a carbohydrate or a protein contains four calories. Alcohol in a food contains seven calories per gram. In other scientific contexts, the term calorie always refers to the small calorie. Though it is not an SI unit, it is still used in chemistry. For example, the energy released in a chemical reaction per mole of reagent is expressed in kilocalories per mole.
This use was due to the ease with which it could be calculated in laboratory reactions in aqueous solution: a volume of reagent dissolved in water forming a solution, with concentration expressed in moles per liter, will induce a temperature change in degrees Celsius in the total volume of water solvent, these quantities can be used to calculate energy per mole. It is occasionally used to specify energy quantities that relate to reaction energy, such as enthalpy of formation and the size of activation barriers. However, its use is being superseded by the SI unit, the joule, multiples thereof such as the kilojoule. In the past a bomb calorimeter was utilised to determine the energy content of food by burning a sample and measuring a temperature change in the surrounding water. Today this method is not used in the USA and has been succeeded by calculating the energy content indirectly from adding up the energy provided by energy-containing nutrients of food; the fibre content is subtracted to account for the fact fibre is not digested by the body
Noble gas
The noble gases make up a group of chemical elements with similar properties. The six noble gases that occur are helium, argon, krypton and the radioactive radon. Oganesson is variously predicted to be a noble gas as well or to break the trend due to relativistic effects. For the first six periods of the periodic table, the noble gases are the members of group 18. Noble gases are highly unreactive except when under particular extreme conditions; the inertness of noble gases makes them suitable in applications where reactions are not wanted. For example, argon is used in incandescent lamps to prevent the hot tungsten filament from oxidizing; the properties of the noble gases can be well explained by modern theories of atomic structure: their outer shell of valence electrons is considered to be "full", giving them little tendency to participate in chemical reactions, it has been possible to prepare only a few hundred noble gas compounds. The melting and boiling points for a given noble gas are close together, differing by less than 10 °C.
Neon, argon and xenon are obtained from air in an air separation unit using the methods of liquefaction of gases and fractional distillation. Helium is sourced from natural gas fields that have high concentrations of helium in the natural gas, using cryogenic gas separation techniques, radon is isolated from the radioactive decay of dissolved radium, thorium, or uranium compounds. Noble gases have several important applications in industries such as lighting and space exploration. A helium-oxygen breathing gas is used by deep-sea divers at depths of seawater over 55 m. After the risks caused by the flammability of hydrogen became apparent, it was replaced with helium in blimps and balloons. Noble gas is translated from the German noun Edelgas, first used in 1898 by Hugo Erdmann to indicate their low level of reactivity; the name makes an analogy to the term "noble metals", which have low reactivity. The noble gases have been referred to as inert gases, but this label is deprecated as many noble gas compounds are now known.
Rare gases is another term, used, but this is inaccurate because argon forms a considerable part of the Earth's atmosphere due to decay of radioactive potassium-40. Pierre Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer discovered a new element on August 18, 1868 while looking at the chromosphere of the Sun, named it helium after the Greek word for the Sun, ἥλιος. No chemical analysis was possible at the time, but helium was found to be a noble gas. Before them, in 1784, the English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish had discovered that air contains a small proportion of a substance less reactive than nitrogen. A century in 1895, Lord Rayleigh discovered that samples of nitrogen from the air were of a different density than nitrogen resulting from chemical reactions. Along with Scottish scientist William Ramsay at University College, Lord Rayleigh theorized that the nitrogen extracted from air was mixed with another gas, leading to an experiment that isolated a new element, from the Greek word ἀργός. With this discovery, they realized.
During his search for argon, Ramsay managed to isolate helium for the first time while heating cleveite, a mineral. In 1902, having accepted the evidence for the elements helium and argon, Dmitri Mendeleev included these noble gases as group 0 in his arrangement of the elements, which would become the periodic table. Ramsay continued his search for these gases using the method of fractional distillation to separate liquid air into several components. In 1898, he discovered the elements krypton and xenon, named them after the Greek words κρυπτός, νέος, ξένος, respectively. Radon was first identified in 1898 by Friedrich Ernst Dorn, was named radium emanation, but was not considered a noble gas until 1904 when its characteristics were found to be similar to those of other noble gases. Rayleigh and Ramsay received the 1904 Nobel Prizes in Physics and in Chemistry for their discovery of the noble gases; the discovery of the noble gases aided in the development of a general understanding of atomic structure.
In 1895, French chemist Henri Moissan attempted to form a reaction between fluorine, the most electronegative element, argon, one of the noble gases, but failed. Scientists were unable to prepare compounds of argon until the end of the 20th century, but these attempts helped to develop new theories of atomic structure. Learning from these experiments, Danish physicist Niels Bohr proposed in 1913 that the electrons in atoms are arranged in shells surrounding the nucleus, that for all noble gases except helium the outermost shell always contains eight electrons. In 1916, Gilbert N. Lewis formulated the octet rule, which conc
