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2. HeliumName: Helium
Helium is one of the so-called noble gases. Helium gas is unreactive, colourless, and odourless. Helium is available in pressurised tanks. Elemental helium is a colourless odourless monoatomic gas. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen. α particles are doubly ionised helium atoms, He2+. Helium is used in lighter than air balloons and while heavier than hydrogen, is far safer since helium does not burn. Helium was first detected in 1868 as a bright yellow line in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun, by French astronomer Pierre Janssen during a solar eclipse in India. The same year, English astronomer Norman Lockyer also observed a previously unknown yellow line in the solar spectrum and concluded that it was caused by an element unknown on Earth. He and English chemist Edward Frankland named the element with the Greek word for the Sun, helios. In 1895, British chemist William Ramsay isolated helium on Earth by treating cleveite with mineral acids. These samples were identified as helium by Lockyer and British physicist William Crookes. It was independently isolated from cleveite the same year by Swedish chemists Per Teodor Cleve and Abraham Langlet. In 1905, American chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland discovered that helium could be extracted from natural gas. In 1907, Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrated that an alpha particle is a helium nucleus. Helium was first liquefied by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1908 by cooling the gas to less than one kelvin. It was first solidified in 1926 by his student Willem Hendrik Keesom. In 1938, Russian physicist Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa discovered that helium-4 has almost no viscosity at temperatures near absolute zero, a phenomenon now called superfluidity. In 1972, the same phenomenon was observed in helium-3 by American physicists Douglas D. Osheroff, David M. Lee, and Robert C. Richardson. Helium II exhibits characteristics of two distinct fluids, one a normal, viscous liquid and the other a superfluid apparently without internal friction. It has a mobile, rapid flow through even the smallest of capillaries and, in the fountain effect, can rise over the rim of a containment vessel in a thin film that appears unaffected by gravity. In addition, its thermal conductivity is greater than that of any other known substance. When introduced, heat will rapidly propagate through the substance in waves, a phenomenon called second sound. Helium can be synthesized by bombardment of lithium or boron with high-velocity protons, but this is not an ecomonically viable method of production. Quick links
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