Omaha daily bee., 1898-10-07
NEWLY DISCOVERED CASES
Problem with Which Scientific Skill is
Graphing.
ELEMENTS o. ARG0N AND HELUM
Chemists and Physicists Probing he
meath the Superficial Surface of
Nnture-Review of Recent
Discoveries.

ject OF interest TO thinking man, writes
Theodore William Richards assistant pro-
fessor OF chemistry in Harvard university,
In the Independent. The ancients deihed
It's various manifestations under such names
as Aeolus, Boreas or Zephyrus and all that
pertained to the kingdom Of these gods
seemed to them pre- -eminently mysterious.
Later, In the gradual evolution OF human
thought concerning human environment,
the air came to be considered one of the
fundamental constituents of the universe
and was incorporated by Aristotle in his
natural philosophy as one Of the four vague
and unsatisfactory elements. The first man
to observe that there we're kinds Of air
fundamentally different from one another
seems to have been Van Helmont, Belgian
alchemist OF Shakespeares time. He
coined the word gas from gstre, to fer
ment, or possibly from chaos), and called
carbonic acid the "gaz sylvestre." Some
years later Hooke, John Rey and Mayow
realized that part OF the air was capable of
supporting combustion, while another part
was not: but the world was not prepared to
believe that the old element" was chiefly
composed OF oxygen and nitrogen until
another century had expired About the
time of Priestley's and Sheele's rediscovery
OF this fact, shortly before the Reign Of Ter
ror, Lavoisier had succeeded in convincing
a reluctant world that matter Is indestruct-
ible and that gases have weight This was
not an idea to be easily grasped by the un-
thinking mind OF the popuace, for burnin
candle seemed to be nnnihlated and glass
empty OF liquid seemed to contain nothing
Only a little later it occurred to Cavendsh
to investigate the ordinarily incombustible
part of air, in order to discover whether
or not 1t is uniform in composition. BY
suitable means he found that almost all
OF the residue could be converted into
inter, thus showing that most of 1t is
certainly nitrogen. The small bubble which
remained, less than l per cent OF the
whole, Cavendish ascribed to "unavoid-
able impurities" In those days chemists
were usually unable to work more accu-
rately than to within / per cent and hence
Cavendishs experiments were considered
conclusive Argon had TO wait 100 years
more for its discovery, until Lord Raleigh
was able to show by his exceedingly ac-
curate experimentation that the incombusti
bio part OF air is heavier than the nitrogen
obtained from inter. 1t was NOT long before
the heavier gas causing this difference in
weight was isolated and the small bubble
which Cavendish had rejected became the
cornerstone of a new series of gases. This
u
triumph of the third decimal" Prof. Ram
say, in trying to find argon in gas con-
tanned in minerals, supposed TO be nitrogen,
discovered the new gas helium. which had
long been known to exist in the sun. Helium
exists on earth only in small quantities, and
oddly enough little, IL any, is to be found in
the atmosphere. One would naturally have
expected to find SO inert a substance remain
ing untouched in the gaseous state, like
nitrogen and argon, after all the more active
substances had combined to form the solid
and liquid crust of the globe.
Argon ana HeIium.
The question of the homogeneiry OF these
gases Immediately became a matter of great
moment Are argon and helium uniform
substances or mere mixtures Of many sub
stances each? The answering of this ques-
ton was difficult because of the fact that
each Of these gases is wholly inert Chemists
usually separate one substance from another
by acting upon the mixture with some agent
capable of combining with the offending
material and converting it into some other
state in which 10 may be separated by iltra-
tion, decantation or one of the other physical
processes at his disposal No substance had
ever before been discovered devoid of power
to combine with other substances, and this
inertnsss, which had undoubtedly delayed
for many years the discovery Of argon, be-
came au once a stumbling block in the way
of its publication and analysis. The only
method of separating two absolutely inert
gases is by the slow and unsatisfactory pro-
cess OF difusion-a process which allows
lighter gas to pass more rapidly than
heavier gas through a porous septum Argon
and heiium refused to be split up by any
such treatment, and as long as they remained
gases there seemed to be little hope Of deter
mining whether or not they are really homo
geneous. AS all the world knows, Prof.
Ramsay and Mr.. Travers solved the prob
lem by converting the obstinate argon into
a liquid capable of more varied treatment.
The separation of the several impurities
which have caused SO much scientific ex-
citement is precisely similar to the separa-
tion OF alcohol from water, or naphtha
from kerosene, by distillation. The only diff
ference lies in the temperatures at which
the respective distillations take place; for
liquid argon boils at about 300 degrees be-
low zero Fahrenheit, instead OF some hun
dreds above. Whether or not the apparently
new elements, neon and metargon, which
have thus been found to exist in smarl pro-
portions in argon land therefore in still
smaller proportions with krypton in air)
are really elementary, or are mixtures of
yet other elements, one cannot yet say
Enough has been done to show, with very
little room for reasonable doubt, that since
the beginning of the world its atmosphere
has contained n whole series of inert sub
stances which seem to play the part of
wall-fiowers in the festivities OF nature
They are not needed or sought, and they
seem to fulhn no useful purpose.
Objects of Great Interest.
To the chemist and physicist especially
to the natural philosopher who seeks the
causes underlying the superficial facts of
nature, argon. hellum and their companions
are objects of unusual interest Their very
inertness excites his curiosity and opens
his eyes TO possibilities undreamed OF by
his old philosophy. What can be the ma
ture OF a substance which has no afinities?
Have its smallest particles no attraction
for anything, or have they an attraction for
one another so strong that no inducement
can persuade them TO separate and unite
with particles OF another kind? Might not
clearer ideas Of the nature OF affinity Itself
that incomprehensible force-be obtained
by the comparison of the properties OF
these bodies with their better known active
cousins? In such speculations one always
ends in profound wonderment as to how