This is true: part of what I liked about high school chemistry is that it was sexy. The idea of the Na hanging out there with an extra electron, hooking up with a Cl lacking one, and voila, salt! Hubba, Hubba, and all that.
But then there were those elements, gases who did not mess around with other elements, and I admired them too. After all, they were “noble” gases, virtuous, chaste.
Evidently, though, I must have mislearned part of this:
The noble gases and nitrogen often do not react with many substances. Inert gases are used generally to avoid unwanted chemical reactions degrading a sample. These undesirable chemical reactions are often oxidation and hydrolysis reactions with the oxygen and moisture in air. The term inert gas is context-dependent because nitrogen gas and several of the noble gases can be made to react under certain conditions.
Purified nitrogen and argon gases are most commonly used as inert gases due to their high natural abundance (78% N2, 1% Ar in air) and low relative cost.
Unlike noble gases, an inert gas is not necessarily elemental and is often a compound gas. Like the noble gases the tendency for non-reactivity is due to the valence, the outermost electron shell, being complete in all the inert gases. This is a tendency, not a rule, as noble gases and other “inert” gases can react to form compounds.
So, those six naturally-occurring noble gases, hanging on the right side (in every sense) of the periodic table – helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and the radioactive radon (Rn) – may not be as chaste as I had once imagined. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide IS considered inert, even though it’s not noble, and is used in wine bottling.
The heavier of the nobles can be persuaded, under carefully contrived conditions, to form compounds with fluorine. (Or sometimes not so carefully: sunlight is enough to force xenon and fluorine into xenon difluoride. Xenon also seems to have oxides.
Woah! I got a great dose of chemistry….I love you narration in the 1st 2 paragraphs…kinda funny…I laughed….I wish we had someone to teach chemistry like that I would have probably felt Chemistry is indeed sexy 🙂
Oh you should teach this in a class…helping students find the fun, while incorporating the meaning…this is brilliant!
Very interesting Roger! I wished you had been my chemistry teacher, then I might have had a better. mark on my report.
Have a great weekend,
Wil, ABCW team
I loved Inert Gases in Chemistry too 🙂
Much needed 🙂
Well Roger I can see why you call them ‘sexy’ – I was a complete dud when it came to chemistry, but you explain it so well.
I’m injoying these insights into iliments!
Wonderful and fun chemistry lesson!
This post on has “ignited” my flame of knowledge regarding gases. Blessings!
I didn’t study chemistry in high school but when I started doing fused glass, enameling, and silver-smithing a few years ago I thought I should learn a thing or two about chemistry. I borrowed a book from the library and every time I began reading it I would fall asleep, thus ending my study of chemistry. I did get a little drowsy but managed to make it through your entire post.
Really? I hated chem at school….. most likely because I was bad at it. But yes, now that it’s not shoved down my throat, it is sexy, and I have some gorgeous chemistry iPad apes to boot.
Great post…I had a great chem teacher in HS…I took a chem test at Purdue and didn’t have to take any more of the required chem courses…I was shocked♪ http://lauriekazmierczak.com/inspired-by-legos/
That is really how one can make a subject interesting.
Chemistry sexy ??? I slept through the whole course so boring it was !
Very creative and witty post for I ~ !
artmusedog and carol (A Creative Harbor)
Well I guess it could be sexy!! Wish I had paid more attention in high school.
Ann
That was an ideal chemistry lesson!
All good quiz knowledge. They separated the girls into cookery and the boys into chemistry at my school. Somehow I think I would have been better learning about the noble gases than making sponge cakes.
Sorry Roger,
I think my eyes started to glaze over as soon as I saw the periodic table. Chemistry is definitely not my thing. Even after all these years.
“Nitrogen is inert” blew some of my students’ minds, but many of them are former military, including artillery.
Get nitrogen to hang out with a bad crowd like that drama queen hydrogen – whew! 😀
I know next to nothing about chemistry. I did one semester in high school and learned next to nothing. Each to his own.
I never like chemistry…but your version sounds so much fun!
You’re right, the chemicals are sexy. Now, if the teacher had said that to me long ago, I might’ve understood what the heck they were all about and had more fun doing the experiments.