Facts about Helium | The royal element

Zihad Hossain
5 min readNov 26, 2020

Most of the chemical processes revolve around the nature of this inert gas. That is, inert gas but only seven. Helium is the lightest of these. The second element of this list. The story of the beginning of helium is similar to that of hydrogen. About four million years after the universe began with the Big Bang, when the temperature dropped significantly, a small amount of helium was formed along with hydrogen. With a small amount of lithium. So helium is one of the three oldest substances in the universe.

As the temperature of the universe decreases, some hydrogen clouds begin to slowly accumulate, colliding with gravitational pull to form stars. And energy has come out of the stars. The fuel of this energy has been converted into hydrogen nuclear fusion reaction to helium. New helium is being made. Helium can be made into heavier elements through nuclear reactions. It is easiest to make helium from hydrogen through fusion. This is why helium is the second most abundant helium in the universe after hydrogen. Hydrogen is 90 percent of the substance in the universe, and helium is 8 percent. All other substances are with other elements.

Helium gas under normal conditions. Like all other substances, it has boiling point and melting point. That is, if the temperature is reduced, it can become liquid or solid at a certain temperature. Interestingly, its boiling point or melting point is lower than all other matter in the universe. So to reduce the temperature of something a lot is taken with the help of liquid helium. It has been observed that below 2 Kelvin (-271 সেল C) helium becomes super fluid. That is, it does not have viscosity then. When something is rolled in some place, frictional force works in the opposite direction. But friction does not work in the case of helium at this temperature. Helium becomes superconducting. That is, there is no obstruction to the movement of heat or electricity through it. For these reasons the use of helium is manifold.

Helium was discovered in 18. Astronomers Jules Janssen and Norman Lockyer separately found the yellow line in the solar spectrum, which is made primarily for helium. Norman Lockyer was the first editor of the world-renowned scientific journal Nature. He named the sun Helios after the Greek name Helios. The first helium was isolated by the Scottish scientist Sir William Ramsay in 1895. He removes nitrogen and oxygen by reacting uranium ore clevite with acid. Then you can see the yellow line found three decades ago with the spectrum. In the same year, Swedish scientists Per Theodor Cleve and Abraham Langlett independently extracted helium and extracted atomic mass.

Hydrogen is the lightest atomic mass, followed by helium. Helium is four times heavier than hydrogen. But the condition in our air is like hydrogen. The effect of the ball of gravity on the light is less. The atmosphere can’t hold it, it slowly disappears into space. Only 0.0005 percent of the atmosphere is helium. On the planet Uranus, helium is much higher, 15 percent in volume, and 26 percent in mass. Even if we calculate all the matter in our Milky Way galaxy, the percentage calculation is the same as Uranus.

There is a lot of helium in the natural gas mines of the world. Alpha particles are produced from radioactive radiation. And the alpha particle is the nucleus of the helium atom. Some natural gas mines may contain up to 7 percent helium gas, which can be separated by partial distillation. The helium on the market comes from this source.

When welding, it is necessary to create a passive environment in the place of welding. The work is done with helium. Rockets will go into space, fuel tanks need high heat. Helium does the job. Since helium is formed by radioactive radiation, helium is very useful in determining the age and other information of a rock. The ratio of helium, uranium and thorium indicates how old the rock is. Helium-neon vesicles are needed to create visible lasers.

Need to talk about a use of helium. As the hobby of flying in the sky is very old, the hobby of going under water is also ancient. The main problem with going under water is breathing. For this, divers carry air in cylinders. The air contains 21 percent oxygen and the rest almost nitrogen. If the amount of oxygen is more than this, it is harmful for the human body. But the water pressure in the seabed is much higher. When he inhales air from the cylinder under pressure, it is seen that some nitrogen is mixed in the blood at high pressure. Once up, the nitrogen can no longer be dissolved. Nitrogen wants to come out through the skin. Molecules of nitrogen gas are relatively large. Blisters appear on the skin when it comes out. Again, it is not only possible to take oxygen in the cylinder, the respiratory process will increase a lot. Nitrogen gas can be used instead of any other small molecule. But there is another problem, that molecules cannot enter the body and take part in any reaction. Although the nitrogen molecule is not an inert gas, it does not react as much as it does when it is inert, high pressure and heat Helium was therefore inevitable in solving this problem. The smaller the atom, the less it will be difficult to get out of the skin. Again inactive, will not harm any physical process.

Helium is needed to make gas balloons. Gas balloons require lighter gas than air. The lightest is hydrogen. But hydrogen is highly combustible, catching fire very easily when it comes in contact with air. So now helium is used in gas balloons.

Helium is the most inert. Other inert gases participate in some reactions at high pressures and temperatures. In this case, the helium is very royal. Research on making helium fluoride has been going on since 1980. Couldn’t succeed.

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Zihad Hossain

Hello friends! I am Zihad. And I love to writing and learning new things.