HELIUM

The name is derived from the Greek, 'helios' meaning sun, as it was in the sun's
corona that helium was first detected. It was discovered in the year 1895. It was
discovered by Sir William Ramsay in London, and independently by Per Teodor
Cleve and Nils Abraham Langlet in Uppsala, Sweden.

In 1868, Pierre J. C. Janssen travelled to India to measure the solar spectrum

during a total eclipse and observed a new yellow line which indicated a new
element. Joseph Norman Lockyer recorded the same line by observing the sun
through London smog and, assuming the new element to be a metal, he named it
helium. In 1882, the Italian Luigi Palmieri found the same line the spectrum of gases
emitted by Vesuvius, as did the American William Hillebrand in 1889 when he
collected the gas given off by the mineral uraninite (UO2) as it dissolves in acid.
However, it was Per Teodor Cleve and Nils Abraham Langer at Uppsala, Sweden,
in 1895, which repeated that experiment and confirmed it was helium and
measured its atomic weight.

Image explanation
The image is of the sun because helium gets its name from ‘helios’, the Greek word
for the sun. Helium was detected in the sun by its spectral lines many years before it
was found on Earth.
Appearance
A colourless, odourless gas that is totally unreactive.
Uses
Helium is used as a cooling medium for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and the
superconducting magnets in MRI scanners and NMR spectrometers. It is also used to
keep satellite instruments cool and was used to cool the liquid oxygen and
hydrogen that powered the Apollo space vehicles. Because of its low density helium
is often used to fill decorative balloons, weather balloons and airships. Hydrogen
was once used to fill balloons but it is dangerously reactive. Because it is very
unreactive, helium is used to provide an inert protective atmosphere for making
fibre optics and semiconductors, and for arc welding. Helium is also used to detect
leaks, such as in car air-conditioning systems, and because it diffuses quickly it is
used to inflate car airbags after impact. A mixture of 80% helium and 20%
oxygen is used as an artificial atmosphere for deep-sea divers and others working
under pressurised conditions. Helium-neon gas lasers are used to scan barcodes in
supermarket checkouts. A new use for helium is a helium-ion microscope that gives
better image resolution than a scanning electron microscope.
Biological role
Helium has no known biological role. It is non-toxic.
Natural abundance
After hydrogen, helium is the second most abundant element in the universe. It is
present in all stars. It was, and is still being, formed from alpha-particle decay of
radioactive elements in the Earth. Some of the helium formed escapes into the
atmosphere, which contains about 5 parts per million by volume. This is a dynamic
balance, with the low-density helium continually escaping to outer space.
It is uneconomical to extract helium from the air. The major source is natural gas,
which can contain up to 7% helium.
REFERENCE
Data
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and
Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December
2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995.
Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and
Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and
Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.

Uses and properties

John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford
University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s
Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014
History text
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and
118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017