Meet the Chemiballs; the Noble Noble Gases

The noble gases were all (mostly) discovered by a Scottish man named Sir William Ramsay. Though back in his day it was more common to call them “rare gases”. This allowed him to create the convention of ending all their names with -on, so you always know when something is a noble gas. Unless it’s helium which is a noble gas but follows the metal naming convention, or iron which ends in -on but is a metal. Also, scientists seem to really like giving things -on names, like prion, codon, electron, etc. I will admit, it does sound cool. So it’s not a perfect system.

The name “noble gasses” is a bit of an early 1900s joke. See, the noble gasses are too lazy to do anything and don’t like bonding with lesser peasant elements. The nobility is also lazy and don’t like associating with peasants. Of course we live in an enlightened post-WWI world and no longer recognize barbaric concepts such as hieratical rule and rigid class structures. But this is basically the equivalent of naming them “trust fund gasses”. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Disclaimer: ¹As you may know, Queen Elizabeth has died on September 8th, 2022 at the age of 96 making her the longest lived monarch in history. At the risk of dating this article, I literally wrote this one day before that. I’m still gonna post it, as you may have noticed, because I think it’s funny and my weekly post deadline is too soon to start over. But I wouldn’t have chosen to write an article full of jokes about the British nobility on the week of the British Queen’s death. How was I supposed to know, I thought she was immortal or something? I am an American and a wonky anarcho-sophocratic transhumanist with western characteristics-ist, and therefore am opposed to the political concept of monarchy. But I think that Old Queenie’s lifelong dedication to respecting the UK’s democracy has earned her at least some respect in death. As a highly publicized figurehead, Elizabeth could have greatly influenced politics even without drawing on her theoretical totalitarian powers as a monarch. She did not. Let’s hope that King Charles continues this legacy.

Table of Contents:

• Argon 
• Neon
• Krypton
• Xenon
• Radon
• Helium
• Oganesson
• Addendum

Argonball; the Laziest Noble Gas

Argonball’s symbol is Ar. Not to be confused with Arylball ²shorthand for an aromatic functional group, whose symbol is also Ar. Normally there wouldn’t be any room for ambiguity in standardized symbols. But since argon doesn’t really make bonds, and the only people who use aryl in diagrams are organic chemists which aren’t taken seriously by other chemists anyways, there is usually little risk of confusion. Obviously Big Chemistry didn’t think of Chemiballs when they did that.

Argon was discovered by Sir William Ramsay and John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, who had isolated it from residue left by evaporating liquified air. They had both earned Nobel prizes for this. Presumably, the Nobel Foundation, being Swedish with a cursory understanding of the English language, assumed they named the noble gasses after them.

I like to imagine that Ramsay proposed the name “noble gasses” as a joke but John “3rd Baron of Rayleigh” Strutt, being British nobility, rather liked the idea and took it completely seriously. I have no idea if that happened, but I reject reality and substitute my own.

It was the first noble gas Ramsay had discovered. Probably because Argon is the third most common gas in earth’s atmosphere, after nitrogen and oxygen. Hence it would be the easiest to discover by that method.

Back in those times, the first thing you do after discovering and isolating any new chemical is subject it to all kinds of random reactions. Burn it, dissolve it in acid, taste it, etc. Luckily this was after the days of alchemy, so he probably didn’t try to make it react with his own urine. Frustrated that it refused to do anything interesting, which itself was interesting as it was the first element to do that, he named it argon after the Greek word “argón” for “lazy”.

Neonball; the Newest Noble Gas But isn’t Actually New

Being Scottish, I presume that Ramsay couldn’t accept sharing any more glory of discovery with English “people”. So after discovering Argon he proceeded to discover the rest of the noble gasses without Baron John Strutt. Admittedly, Ramsay did have the help of Morris “Rare Gas Travers” Travers who was an English but his nickname was cool enough to redeem him.

You know how neo means new, (i.e. Neo Tokyo)? Yeah, that’s where the name neon came from. Because it was like argon, but new. Or it was new to Ramsay at least, neon on earth has existed for billions of years. While Ramsay had named argon after the unaltered greek word “argón”, presumably he didn’t think that just calling this one “néos” sounded cool enough. And you know how much scientists like -on suffix terminology.

People tend to associate the word “neon” with highly fluorescent color pallets, especially fluorescent green. But neon is not green, it glows deep red when in a fluorescent sign. They also associate those signs with the word “neon”, to the point of calling them neon regardless of if they actually contain neon gas. The color of a sign is determined by the gas. Helium glows orange, nitrogen, oxygen, and argon glow blueish purple, krypton glows green, xenon glows gray, and mercury vapor glows blue.

Kryptonball; the most Secretive Noble Gas

Krypton was named after “crypto”, which today can be associated with several things. But at the time it just meant “secret”. I’m not sure why Ramsay called it that.

There isn’t much interesting about krypton to talk about, so I’m just gonna write about the one thing you’re actually thinking of right now.

Krypton is also the name of Superman’s home planet. I’m not sure why Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster called it that. Though apparently DC Comics and Niel Degrasse Tyson have named an actual planet after it. I guess that’s technically better than whatever random assortment of letters and numbers they were going to call it.

Kryptonite is a fictional glowing rock that can make Superman its little bitchboy by giving him a serious case of a condition known as contrivus plotdiviceitis. And no, it’s not called that because it’s a mineral containing krypton, in fact it does not contain any krypton (which makes sense). It’s found in meteorites from the planet Krypton. Apparently, it’s only dangerous to Kryptonians because the Earth has a yellow sun?

Anyways, kryptonite is also an actual mineral now, sort of. Another English named Dr. Stanley (not to be confused with Mr. Stan Lee), discovered a new mineral whose chemical formula was sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. To make sure this hadn’t already been discovered he typed that into the internet. Apparently, in the movie Superman Returns a case of kryptonite was labeled with that same formula. So he decided to name it that. This is surely the only benefit that Superman Returns has ever had to anyone. Unfortunately, because it contains no krypton it can’t officially be called kryptonite. So instead it was named Jedarite after the mine it was discovered in. But I’m stull gonna call it kryptonite.

So if we’re ever invaded by aliens from real Krypton, we’ll at least have that.

Xenonball; the Strangest Noble Gas

Xenon comes from the Greek word “xeno” meaning strange. I choose to believe that Sir. Ramsay had so much chaddly energy that he could tell exactly what the chemical properties of an element were just from looking at it. We didn’t discover just how strange xenon is until 1962, and most highschool chemistry teachers still haven’t discovered it. But he didn’t tell anyone as he wanted to leave a little of the joy of discovery to us mortals.

In general, as you go down the periodic table elements get fatter. As they get fatter they get weaker and make shittier bonds. This is because heavier elements have more electrons which stack on top of each other in shells. The more shells the further the distance between the nucleus and the valence electrons, generally. The more distance the less influence an atom has on its outermost electrons. This is like how my secret underground laboratory in the Alaskan Yukon is nominally on US territory and subject to property tax, but no taxman is about to come up here and check. Not least because of the man eating and highly endangered Siberian tigers I’ve released into the surrounding ecosystem.

Elements like Gold and Xenon, which normally shouldn’t be chemically reactive due to their stability, are just so big and fat that they can’t stop more electronegative atoms from stealing their valence electrons. This is what is known as a dative bond, or an adduct if you’re a coordination chemist and want even more unnecessary terminology.

The best part is that you can make pretty much any atom strongly electronegative if you ionize it hard enough. That’s how you get cursed chemicals like the tetraxenonogold cation (AuXe₄²⁺) where four xenons are bonded directly to one gold which I swear exists and yes I hate it too. 

Heliumballoon; the Lightest Noble Gas

Helium, as you may notice, does not end in -on because it was not discovered by Ramsay, though he was the first to isolate it.

It was named after the Greek god of the sun Helios. This is because it was discovered by using spectroscopy on the sun. This fact in itself shows how hard it is to get helium on this backwater rock we call Earth.

Helium is one of the most abundant things in the universe. You know how things with low density tend to float to the top of things with higher density? Helium has such low density that it all floats to the top of Earth’s atmosphere then drifts off into space. 

So how come I can fill my balloons with helium if it’s all in space? Because those are imposter heliumballs. Well, it is helium. It’s just mostly not the primordial helium that was formed by fusing hydrogenballs together inside a star and has since been trapped inside the earth’s crust since its formation (though a tiny fraction is). Your helium is literally made out of radiation. 

Radiation is what happens when an atom is too big and unstable. When this happens there will be a chance that at any given time the atom will shoot out some of its subatomic particles and energy in order to be less big and unstable. One of the most common kinds of radiation, alpha radiation, consists of two protons and two neutrons stuck together. It just so happens that that perfectly describes the nucleus of a helium-4 atom. So when that alpha particle hits another molecule or atom and doesn’t fuse with it, there’s a good chance that it will steal a couple electrons off it and become a brand new helium atom.

Deposits of radioactive elements in the earth, such as uranium and thorium, tend to accumulate a lot of helium gas over time. Some of this gas seeps all the way to the surface and escapes into space. Some will mix with other natural gas deposits.

But this means that helium is hard to get on earth and is quickly depleting. 

Radonball; the most Radioactive Noble Gas

Radon, as you might guess from the name, is a radioactive noble gas. Because of this, it is completely useless for everything except giving people lung cancer. Despite having a relatively short half-life, radon is continually produced by the decay of untapped uranium deposits. So it tends to seep out of the ground and collect in poorly ventilated basements. Turns out that unknowingly breathing in a radioactive gas is not good for your long term health.

Noble gases have pretty limited applications even when they can’t kill you. There just aren’t many reasons to ever use radon. Mr. Scientist was quick to tell me that there are some uses, but two of the three were “radioactive glow in the dark paint” and “radon spas”, both of which are widely illegal and for good reason.

Oganessonball; the Heaviest Noble Gas

Oganesson is the heaviest known element. It’s also the newest. It’s named after the genius Russian scientist Yuri Oganessian, possibly because he already has a name that sounds like a noble gas. 

Russia is one of the world leaders in atomic physics, largely as a remnant of the Soviet Union’s nuclear research. Same reason why the USA is the other world leader. In fact, they’re working on building a new special particle accelerator in the Russian city of Dubna that will create even heavier undiscovered elements.

As for Oganessonball itself, there’s not much to say. Its half-life is so short that it can’t really do anything. It is born inside a particle accelerator, briefly terrified and confused, then it ceases to exist just as quickly as it had started. If that’s not a metaphor for the human condition I don’t know what is.

Edit:³A helpful Redditor has informed me that science people have used science to predict that Oganesson would hypothetically be more chemically reactive than other noble gases and is a solid. This means that it’s a noble gas that is neither noble nor a gas. But again, it’s not like you can make a rock of oganesson or anything. If you somehow did, you really wouldn’t want to be standing anywhere near it.

Addendum:

I drew all these. As I am a firm believer in freedom of info on the internet, I give anyone permission to do whatever they want with them. Copy, repost, modify, etc, I don’t care.

These are all poor-quality Jpegs because I value the page load speed of mobile users, and also because of a subversive plot to direct people to my social media. For higher quality versions check out this Reddit post. For more Chemiball stuff, check out r/Chemiballs. This is a shockingly obscure community and deserves more attention.

Sources:

My Unnamed Professors

Seidel S, Seppelt K. Xenon as a complex ligand: the tetra xenono Gold(II) cation in AuXe(4)2+(Sb(2)F(11)-)(2). Science (New York, N.Y.). 2000 Oct;290(5489):117-118. DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5489.117. PMID: 11021792. https://lab409.chem.ccu.edu.tw/~ppmpk/paper/4-a.pdf

https://healthfully.com/uses-of-radon-gas-4900377.html

https://www.wired.com/2007/04/kryptonite-is-r-1/

https://www.space.com/18348-neil-tyson-superman-krypton-planet.html

Wikipedia