29 Facts About Argon

1.

Argon is a chemical element with the symbol Ar and atomic number 18.

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2.

Argon is the third-most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere, at 0.

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3.

Argon is the most abundant noble gas in Earth's crust, comprising 0.

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4.

Argon is extracted industrially by the fractional distillation of liquid air.

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5.

Argon is mostly used as an inert shielding gas in welding and other high-temperature industrial processes where ordinarily unreactive substances become reactive; for example, an argon atmosphere is used in graphite electric furnaces to prevent the graphite from burning.

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6.

Argon is used in incandescent, fluorescent lighting, and other gas-discharge tubes.

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7.

Argon has approximately the same solubility in water as oxygen and is 2.

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8.

Argon is colorless, odorless, nonflammable and nontoxic as a solid, liquid or gas.

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9.

Argon is chemically inert under most conditions and forms no confirmed stable compounds at room temperature.

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10.

Argon was first isolated from air in 1894 by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay at University College London by removing oxygen, carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen from a sample of clean air.

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11.

Argon was encountered in 1882 through independent research of H F Newall and W N Hartley.

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12.

Argon is isolated from air by fractionation, most commonly by cryogenic fractional distillation, a process that produces purified nitrogen, oxygen, neon, krypton and xenon.

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13.

Argon produced directly by stellar nucleosynthesis is dominated by the alpha-process nuclide Ar.

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14.

Argon is extracted industrially by the fractional distillation of liquid air in a cryogenic air separation unit; a process that separates liquid nitrogen, which boils at 77.

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15.

Argon is inexpensive, since it occurs naturally in air and is readily obtained as a byproduct of cryogenic air separation in the production of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen: the primary constituents of air are used on a large industrial scale.

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16.

Argon is used in some high-temperature industrial processes where ordinarily non-reactive substances become reactive.

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17.

Argon is used in some types of arc welding such as gas metal arc welding and gas tungsten arc welding, as well as in the processing of titanium and other reactive elements.

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18.

Argon is used in the poultry industry to asphyxiate birds, either for mass culling following disease outbreaks, or as a means of slaughter more humane than electric stunning.

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19.

Argon is denser than air and displaces oxygen close to the ground during inert gas asphyxiation.

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20.

Argon is used to displace oxygen- and moisture-containing air in packaging material to extend the shelf-lives of the contents .

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21.

Argon is sometimes used as the propellant in aerosol cans.

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22.

Argon is used as a preservative for such products as varnish, polyurethane, and paint, by displacing air to prepare a container for storage.

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23.

Argon is preferable to the helium that had been used in the preceding five decades, because helium gas escapes through the intermolecular pores in most containers and must be regularly replaced.

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24.

Argon is preferred for the sputter coating of specimens for scanning electron microscopy.

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25.

Argon gas is commonly used for sputter deposition of thin films as in microelectronics and for wafer cleaning in microfabrication.

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26.

Argon has been used experimentally to replace nitrogen in the breathing or decompression mix known as Argox, to speed the elimination of dissolved nitrogen from the blood.

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27.

Argon is used in technical scuba diving to inflate a dry suit because it is inert and has low thermal conductivity.

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28.

Argon is used as a propellant in the development of the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket .

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29.

Argon has been used by athletes as a doping agent to simulate hypoxic conditions.

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