General properties of the group
- Key People:
- Sir William Ramsay
- Friedrich Adolf Paneth
Each noble-gas element is situated in the periodic table between an element of the most electronegative group, the halogen elements (Group 17, the atoms of which add electrons to achieve the octet and thereby become negative ions), and an element of the most electropositive group, the alkali metals (Group 1, the atoms of which lose electrons to become positive ions).
Several important uses of the noble gases depend on their reluctance to react chemically. Their indifference toward oxygen, for example, confers utter nonflammability upon the noble gases. Although helium is not quite as buoyant as hydrogen, its incombustibility makes it a safer lifting gas for lighter-than-air craft. The noble gases—most often helium and argon, the least expensive—are used to provide chemically unreactive environments for such operations as cutting, welding, and refining of metals such as aluminum (atmospheric oxygen and, in some cases, nitrogen or carbon dioxide would react with the hot metal).
The noble gases absorb and emit electromagnetic radiation in a much less complex way than do other substances. This behaviour is used in discharge lamps and fluorescent lighting devices: if any noble gas is confined at low pressure in a glass tube and an electrical discharge is passed through it, the gas will glow. Neon produces the familiar orange-red colour of advertising signs; xenon emits a beautiful blue colour.
Noble gases have uses that are derived from their other chemical properties. The very low boiling points and melting points of the noble gases make them useful in the study of matter at extremely low temperatures. The low solubility of helium in fluids leads to its admixture with oxygen for breathing by deep-sea divers: because helium does not dissolve in the blood, it does not form bubbles upon decompression (as nitrogen does, leading to the condition known as decompression sickness, or the bends). Xenon has been used as an anesthetic; although it is costly, it is nonflammable and readily eliminated from the body. Radon is highly radioactive; its only uses have been those that exploit this property (e.g., radiation therapy). (Oganesson is also radioactive, but, since only a few atoms of this element have thus far been observed, its physical and chemical properties cannot be documented.)
Only krypton, xenon, and radon are known to form stable compounds. The compounds of these noble gases are powerful oxidizing agents (substances that tend to remove electrons from others) and have potential value as reagents in the synthesis of other chemical compounds.