Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Helium is a commonly used carrier gas for gas chromatography. The age of rocks and minerals that contain uranium and thorium can be estimated by measuring the level of helium with a process known as helium dating. [28] [30] Helium at low temperatures is used in cryogenics and in certain cryogenic applications.
An observation of the new yellow line had been made earlier by Janssen at the 18 August 1868 solar eclipse [13], and because their papers reached the French academy on the same day, he and Lockyer usually are awarded joint credit for helium's discovery. Terrestrial helium was found about 27 years later by the Scottish chemist William Ramsay.
Helium production and storage in the United States, 1940-2014 (data from USGS) In 1903, an oil exploration well at Dexter, Kansas, produced a gas that would not burn.. Kansas state geologist Erasmus Haworth took samples of the gas back to the University of Kansas at Lawrence where chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland discovered that gas contained 1.84 percent
Terrestrial helium consists almost exclusively (all but ~2ppm) [16] of 4 He. 4 He's boiling point of 4.2 K is the lowest of all known substances except 3 He. When cooled further to 2.17 K, it becomes a unique superfluid with zero viscosity. It solidifies only at pressures above 25 atmospheres, where it melts at 0.95 K.
Helium is composed of two electrons bound by the electromagnetic force to a nucleus containing two protons along with two neutrons, depending on the isotope, held together by the strong force. Unlike for hydrogen , a closed-form solution to the Schrödinger equation for the helium atom has not been found.
Helium also has a very low boiling point (-268.9°C or -452°F), allowing it to remain a gas even in super-cold environments, an important feature because many rocket fuels are stored in that ...
Helium storage and conservation is a process of maintaining supplies of helium and preventing wasteful loss. Helium is commercially produced as a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Until the mid-1990s, the United States Bureau of Mines operated a large scale helium storage facility to support government requirements for helium.
At some point in the mid-1980s, a pony-tailed upstate New York environmental activist named Jay Westerveld picked up a card in a South Pacific hotel room and read the following: "Save Our Planet ...