Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. It was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772. Although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Henry Cavendish had independently done so at about the same time, Rutherford is generally accorded the credit because his work was published first. The name "nitrogène" was suggested by French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in 1790 when it was found that nitrogen was present in nitric acid and nitrates. Antoine Lavoisier suggested instead the name "azote", from the Greek ἀζωτικός "no life", as it is an asphyxiant gas; this name is instead used in many languages, such as French, Italian, Russian, Romanian and Turkish, and appears in the English names of some nitrogen compounds such as hydrazine, azides and azo compounds.
Introduction
Nitrogen
Nitrogen | Introduction
Daniel Rutherford. Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford. Daniel Rutherford. Daniel Rutherford
the general surface wind circulation associated with the high-pressure center (h) is most likely
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A high-pressure area, high ,or anticyclone.
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how is it formed?
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Winds within high-pressure areas flow outward from the higher pressure areas near their centers towards the lower pressure areas further from their centers. Gravity adds to the forces. The winds are further twisted due to Coriolis effect.
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could i know more about the effect mentioned above?
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This is an apparent, but fictitious, force that arises when an observer is in a rotating reference frame, due to the conservation of angular momentum of the air as it moves towards or away from the Earth's axis of rotation.
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how is it related to the wind conditions?
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They are associated with light winds at the surface and subsidence through the lower portion of the troposphere.
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what is the last term used above?
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It is the lowest layer of earth's atmosphere.
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what does it consist of?
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Nitrogrn, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide and small amounts of other gases.
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who discovered the former from the list above?
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Rutherford discovered nitrogen by the isolation of the particle in 1772. When Joseph Black was studying the properties of carbon dioxide, he found that a candle would not burn in it. Black turned this problem over to his student at the time, Rutherford. Rutherford kept a mouse in a space with a confined quantity of air until it died. Then, he burned a candle in the remaining air until it went out. Afterwards, he burned phosphorus in that, until it would not burn. Then the air was passed through a carbon dioxide absorbing solution. The remaining component of the air did not support combustion, and a mouse could not live in it.
Daniel Rutherford | Isolation of nitrogen
Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. It was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772. Although Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Henry Cavendish had independently done so at about the same time, Rutherford is generally accorded the credit because his work was published first. The name "nitrogène" was suggested by French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in 1790 when it was found that nitrogen was present in nitric acid and nitrates. Antoine Lavoisier suggested instead the name "azote", from the Greek ἀζωτικός "no life", as it is an asphyxiant gas; this name is instead used in many languages, such as French, Italian, Russian, Romanian and Turkish, and appears in the English names of some nitrogen compounds such as hydrazine, azides and azo compounds.
Nitrogen | Introduction
Argon: Lord Rayleigh and Ramsay discovered argon in 1894 by comparing the molecular weights of nitrogen prepared by liquefaction from air, and nitrogen prepared by chemical means. It was the first noble gas to be isolated. Krypton, neon, and xenon: In 1898, within a period of three weeks, Ramsay and Travers successively separated krypton, neon and xenon from liquid argon by exploiting differences in their boiling points.
Nonmetal | Late 19th century: He, F, (Ge), Ar, Kr, Ne, Xe
During an analysis of the uranium containing mineral uranite he discovered that a gas evolved. He identified this gas by spectroscopic methods to be nitrogen. Several years later in 1895 William Ramsay did similar experiments with uranium containing minerals and discovered by similar methods that the gas was a mixture of argon and helium which until then had only been detected in the corona of stars. A reexamination by Ramsay of Hillebrand's samples showed that the gas from uranite contained a large amount of nitrogen.
William Francis Hillebrand | Studies of uranium
No chemical analysis was possible at the time, but helium was later found to be a noble gas. Before them, in 1784, the English chemist and physicist Henry Cavendish had discovered that air contains a small proportion of a substance less reactive than nitrogen. A century later, in 1895, Lord Rayleigh discovered that samples of nitrogen from the air were of a different density than nitrogen resulting from chemical reactions. Along with Scottish scientist William Ramsay at University College, London, Lord Rayleigh theorized that the nitrogen extracted from air was mixed with another gas, leading to an experiment that successfully isolated a new element, argon, from the Greek word (, "idle" or "lazy").
Noble gas | History
Nitrogen compounds have a very long history, ammonium chloride having been known to Herodotus. They were well known by the Middle Ages. Alchemists knew nitric acid as "aqua fortis" (strong water), as well as other nitrogen compounds such as ammonium salts and nitrate salts. The mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids was known as "aqua regia" (royal water), celebrated for its ability to dissolve gold, the king of metals. The discovery of nitrogen is attributed to the Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772, who called it "noxious air". Though he did not recognise it as an entirely different chemical substance, he clearly distinguished it from Joseph Black's "fixed air", or carbon dioxide.
Nitrogen | History
The nitrogen compound sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) has been known since the time of the Ancient Egyptians. In the 1760s two scientists, Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley, isolated nitrogen from air, but neither realized the presence of an undiscovered element. It was not until several years later, in 1772, that Daniel Rutherford realized that the gas was indeed nitrogen. The alchemist Hennig Brandt first discovered phosphorus in Hamburg in 1669. Brandt produced the element by heating evaporated urine and condensing the resulting phosphorus vapor in water. Brandt initially thought that he had discovered the Philosopher's Stone, but eventually realized that this was not the case.
Pnictogen | History
Neither of the partners chose to patent their discovery of this compound, releasing it for everybody to use. In 1823 they discovered nitrogen in alkaloid compounds. Other compounds they discovered include colchicine and veratrine.
Joseph Bienaimé Caventou | Introduction
Nitrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 7, the symbol N and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere. The element nitrogen was discovered as a separable component of air, by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford, in 1772. It occurs naturally in form of two isotopes: nitrogen-14 and nitrogen-15. Many industrially important compounds, such as ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates (propellants and explosives), and cyanides, contain nitrogen. The extremely strong bond in elemental nitrogen dominates nitrogen chemistry, causing difficulty for both organisms and industry in breaking the bond to convert the molecule into useful compounds, but at the same time causing release of large amounts of often useful energy when the compounds burn, explode, or decay back into nitrogen gas.
Period 2 element | Nitrogen
In earlier times, niter had been confused with Egyptian "natron" (sodium carbonate) – called νίτρον (nitron) in Greek – which, despite the name, contained no nitrate.
Nitrogen | History
Hydrogen: Cavendish, in 1766, was the first to distinguish hydrogen from other gases, although Paracelsus around 1500, Robert Boyle (1670), and Joseph Priestley (?) had observed its production by reacting strong acids with metals. Lavoisier named it in 1793. Oxygen: Carl Wilhelm Scheele obtained oxygen by heating mercuric oxide and nitrates in 1771, but did not publish his findings until 1777. Priestley also prepared this new "air" by 1774, but only Lavoisier recognized it as a true element; he named it in 1777. Nitrogen: Rutherford discovered nitrogen while he was studying at the University of Edinburgh. He showed that the air in which animals breathed, after removal of exhaled carbon dioxide, was no longer able to burn a candle.
Nonmetal | 18th century: H, O, N, (Te), Cl
Rutherford called the gas (which we now know would have consisted primarily of nitrogen) "noxious air" or "phlogisticated air". Rutherford reported the experiment in 1772. He and Black were convinced of the validity of the phlogiston theory, so they explained their results in terms of it.
Daniel Rutherford | Isolation of nitrogen
ABC transporters). To do this, his group uses X-ray crystallography. His interest in nitrogenase began in William Lipscomb's laboratory.
Douglas C. Rees | Introduction
The most celebrated discoveries of Scottish chemist William Ramsay were made in inorganic chemistry. Ramsay was intrigued by the British physicist John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh's 1892 discovery that the atomic weight of nitrogen found in chemical compounds was lower than that of nitrogen found in the atmosphere. He ascribed this discrepancy to a light gas included in chemical compounds of nitrogen, while Ramsay suspected a hitherto undiscovered heavy gas in atmospheric nitrogen. Using two different methods to remove all known gases from air, Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh were able to announce in 1894 that they had found a monatomic, chemically inert gaseous element that constituted nearly 1 percent of the atmosphere; they named it argon.
History of chemistry | Ramsay's discovery of the noble gases
The next year, Ramsay tested a report of American chemist William Francis Hillebrand, who found a steam of an unreactive gas from a sample of uraninite. Wishing to prove it was nitrogen, Ramsay analyzed a different uranium mineral, cleveite, and found a new element, which he named krypton. This finding was corrected by British chemist William Crookes, who matched its spectrum to that of the Sun's helium. Following this discovery, Ramsay, using fractional distillation to separate air, discovered several more such gases in 1898: metargon, krypton, neon, and xenon; detailed spectroscopic analysis of the first of these demonstrated it was argon contaminated by a carbon-based impurity.
History of the periodic table | Inert gases
This adduct was first reported by Bernard Courtois in 1812, and its formula was finally determined in 1905 by Oswald Silberrad. Its solid state structure consists of chains of -NI-I-NI-I-NI-I-... Ammonia molecules are situated between the chains. When kept cold in the dark and damp with ammonia, NI · NH is stable.
Nitrogen triiodide | Structure of NI and its derivatives
Trace amounts of nitrogen ions were detected but at levels consistent with an Enceladus source.
Gas torus | Introduction
The problem was solved shortly by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac. Porrett in 1813 made experiments with Rupert Kirk and William Wilson on the dangerous substance chloride of nitrogen.
Robert Porrett | Chemist
Biological nitrogen fixation was discovered by Martinus Beijerinck in 1885.
List of Dutch discoveries | Biological nitrogen fixation (1885)
The fact that there was a component of air that does not support combustion was clear to Rutherford, although he was not aware that it was an element. Nitrogen was also studied at about the same time by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Henry Cavendish, and Joseph Priestley, who referred to it as "burnt air" or "phlogisticated air". Nitrogen gas was inert enough that Antoine Lavoisier referred to it as "mephitic air" or "azote", from the Greek word (azotikos), "no life". In an atmosphere of pure nitrogen, animals died and flames were extinguished. Though Lavoisier's name was not accepted in English, since it was pointed out that almost all gases (indeed, with the sole exception of oxygen) are mephitic, it is used in many languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Albanian, Turkish, etc.; the German "Stickstoff" similarly refers to the same characteristic, viz.
Nitrogen | History
By dissolving the radioactive ore cleveite in acid, William Ramsay was able to collect a gas trapped within the rock, which had an atomic weight of 4, and the same spectral lines which Lockyer had observed: helium. Prior to this, Ramsay had already isolated a new gas from the atmosphere; argon, with an atomic weight of 40. A problem now arose – Mendeleev had not left any gaps which were suitable for either of these two new elements, which led Ramsay to conclude an entire group was missing from the periodic table – only two of whose members were now known to exist, helium and argon.
Chemistry: A Volatile History | William Ramsay discovers the noble gases
The difference was slight, but it was important enough to attract their attention for many months. They concluded that there was another gas in the air mixed in with the nitrogen. Argon was also encountered in 1882 through independent research of H. F. Newall and W. N. Hartley. Each observed new lines in the emission spectrum of air that did not match known elements.
Argon | History
The gas was first synthesised in 1772 by English natural philosopher and chemist Joseph Priestley who called it "phlogisticated nitrous air" (see phlogiston theory) or "inflammable nitrous air". Priestley published his discovery in the book "Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775)", where he described how to produce the preparation of "nitrous air diminished", by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid.
Nitrous oxide | History
The nitrogen rule states that organic compounds containing exclusively hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and the halogens either have 1) an "odd nominal mass" that indicates an "odd number" of nitrogen atoms are present or 2) an "even nominal mass" that indicates an "even number" of nitrogen atoms in the molecular formula of the molecular ion. The nitrogen rule is not a rule, "per se", as much as a general principle which may prove useful when attempting to solve organic mass spectrometry structures.
Nitrogen rule | Introduction
Neon was discovered in 1898 by the British chemists Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916) and Morris W. Travers (1872–1961) in London. Neon was discovered when Ramsay chilled a sample of air until it became a liquid, then warmed the liquid and captured the gases as they boiled off. The gases nitrogen, oxygen, and argon had been identified, but the remaining gases were isolated in roughly their order of abundance, in a six-week period beginning at the end of May 1898. First to be identified was krypton. The next, after krypton had been removed, was a gas which gave a brilliant red light under spectroscopic discharge.
Neon | History
Johan Gustav Christoffer Thorsager Kjeldahl ( 16 August 1849 – 18 July 1900), was a Danish chemist who developed a method for determining the amount of nitrogen in certain organic compounds using a laboratory technique which was named the Kjeldahl method after him.
Johan Kjeldahl | Introduction
The possibility that atmospheric nitrogen reacts with certain chemicals was first observed by Desfosses in 1828. He observed that mixtures of alkali metal oxides and carbon react at high temperatures with nitrogen. With the use of barium carbonate as starting material, the first commercial process became available in the 1860s, developed by Margueritte and Sourdeval. The resulting barium cyanide could be reacted with steam yielding ammonia.
Nitrogen fixation | Industrial processes
The human body contains about 3% nitrogen by mass, the fourth most abundant element in the body after oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. The nitrogen cycle describes movement of the element from the air, into the biosphere and organic compounds, then back into the atmosphere. Many industrially important compounds, such as ammonia, nitric acid, organic nitrates (propellants and explosives), and cyanides, contain nitrogen. The extremely strong triple bond in elemental nitrogen (N≡N), the second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule after carbon monoxide (CO), dominates nitrogen chemistry. This causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting N into useful compounds, but at the same time means that burning, exploding, or decomposing nitrogen compounds to form nitrogen gas releases large amounts of often useful energy.
Nitrogen | Introduction
In 1966, W. E. Tolberg first synthesized a five-valent nitrogen compound of nitrogen and fluorine when tetrafluoroammonium compounds, tetrafluoroammonium hexafluoroantimonate NFSbF and tetrafluoroammonium hexafluoroarsenate NFAsF were made. In 1971 C. T. Goetschel announced the preparation of NFBF and also produced a white solid assumed to be tetrafluoroammonium fluoride (NFF). This was made by treating nitrogen trifluoride and fluorine with 3 MeV electron radiation at 77 K. It decomposed above 143 K back into those ingredients. Theoretical studies also show the ionic compound is very likely to decompose to nitrogen trifluoride and fluorine gas. Karl O. Christe synthesised bis(tetrafluoroammonium) hexafluoronickelate (NF)NiF.
Nitrogen pentafluoride | Ionic solid
These discoveries were made with the help of his addition of a gas separator to the particle accelerator to help filter out everything but the heavy elements they were looking for.
Victor Ninov | Career
Fowler wrote several books including "Sewage Works Analyses" (1902), "An Introduction to Bacteriological and Enzyme Chemistry" (1911), "An introduction to the biochemistry of nitrogen conservation" (1934). In 1935 he patented a process to separate solids from liquids in sludge and sewage treatment. He was an ardent Christian scientist and after his retirement took an interest in economics and energetics and wanted to reform currency. He suggested a currency called the "ERN" which was the protein equivalent having 10 grams of nitrogen or the energy derived from it, 300 calories. The value of any commodity or service would then be the energy needed to produce it in terms of ERN units.
Gilbert John Fowler | Writings
Others believed the spectral lines could belong to an element that occurred on the Sun but not Earth; some believed it was yet to be found on Earth. In 1894, British chemist William Ramsay and British physicist Lord Rayleigh isolated argon from air and determined that it was a new element. Argon, however, did not engage in any chemical reactions and was—highly unusually for a gas—monatomic; it did not fit into the periodic law and thus challenged the very notion of it. Not all scientists immediately accepted this report; Mendeleev's original response to that was that argon was a triatomic form of nitrogen rather than an element of its own.
History of the periodic table | Inert gases
The method consists of combusting a sample of known mass in a high temperature range of 800-900°C chamber in the presence of oxygen. This leads to the release of carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen. The gases are then passed over special columns (such as potassium hydroxide aqueous solution) that absorb the carbon dioxide and water. A column containing a thermal conductivity detector at the end is then used to separate the nitrogen from any residual carbon dioxide and water and the remaining nitrogen content is measured. The instrument must first be calibrated by analyzing a material that is pure and has a known nitrogen concentration.
Dumas method | Method
After experimentation Rutherford traced the reaction to the nitrogen in air and found that when alpha particles were introduced into pure nitrogen gas, the effect was larger. In 1919 Rutherford assumed that the alpha particle knocked a proton out of nitrogen, turning it into carbon. After observing Blackett's cloud chamber images in 1925, Rutherford realized that the opposite was the case: after capture of the alpha particle, a proton is ejected, so that heavy oxygen, not carbon, is the end result i.e. Z is not decremented but incremented. This was the first reported nuclear reaction, N + α → O + p.
Proton | History
"ersticken" "to choke or suffocate") and still remains in English in the common names of many nitrogen compounds, such as hydrazine and compounds of the azide ion. Finally, it led to the name "pnictogens" for the group headed by nitrogen, from the Greek πνίγειν "to choke". The English word nitrogen (1794) entered the language from the French "nitrogène", coined in 1790 by French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756–1832), from the French "nitre" (potassium nitrate, also called saltpeter) and the French suffix "-gène", "producing", from the Greek -γενής (-genes, "begotten"). Chaptal's meaning was that nitrogen is the essential part of nitric acid, which in turn was produced from nitre.
Nitrogen | History
With the discovery he was able to demonstrate how nitrogen-poor Dutch nature areas became more rich in nitrogen. The discovery was a serendipitous find. During his career Van Breemen also performed research on the production of methane during rice growing. The result of the research being that improved crop produce resulted in lower methane production. He retired on 30 September 2004 and opened an art gallery with his wife on the same day.
Nico van Breemen | Career
A van der Waals compound with argon is not known.
Solid nitrogen | Noble gases
The arc was powered by a battery of five Grove cells and a Ruhmkorff coil of medium size. The alkali absorbed the oxides of nitrogen produced by the arc and also carbon dioxide. They operated the arc until no more reduction of volume of the gas could be seen for at least an hour or two and the spectral lines of nitrogen disappeared when the gas was examined. The remaining oxygen was reacted with alkaline pyrogallate to leave behind an apparently non-reactive gas which they called Argon. Before isolating the gas, they had determined that nitrogen produced from chemical compounds was 0.5% lighter than nitrogen from the atmosphere.
Argon | History
British chemist Henry Cavendish, the discoverer of hydrogen in 1766, discovered that air is composed of more gases than nitrogen and oxygen. He recorded these findings in 1784 and 1785; among them, he found a then-unidentified gas less reactive than nitrogen. Helium was first reported in 1868; the report was based on the new technique of spectroscopy and some spectral lines emitted by the Sun did not match those of any of the known elements. Mendeleev was not convinced by this finding since variance of temperate led to change of intensity of spectral lines and their location on the spectrum; this opinion was held by some other scientists of the day.
History of the periodic table | Inert gases
Ira Sprague Bowen (December 21, 1898 – February 6, 1973) was an American physicist and astronomer. In 1927 he discovered that nebulium was not really a chemical element but instead doubly ionized oxygen.
Ira Sprague Bowen | Introduction
He also prepared compounds with manganese, a fluorouranate, a perchlorate, a fluorosulfate and NF salts. Christe attempted to make NFF by metathesis of NFSbF with CsF in HF solvent at 20 °C. However, a variant, tetrafluoroammonium bifluoride (NFHF·"n"HF), was produced. At room temperature it was a milky liquid, but when cooled, turned pasty. At −45 °C it had the form of a white solid. When reheated it frothed, giving off F, HF and NF as gases. This has CAS number 71485-49-9. I. J. Solomon believed that nitrogen pentafluoride was produced by the thermal decomposition of NFAsF, but experimental results were not reproduced.
Nitrogen pentafluoride | Ionic solid
Hermann Hellriegel (October 21, 1831 – September 24, 1895) was a German agricultural chemist who discovered that leguminous plants assimilate the free nitrogen of the atmosphere.
Hermann Hellriegel | Introduction
In 1787, the French physicist and balloon pioneer, Jacques Charles, found that oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and air expand to the same extent over the same 80 kelvin interval. He noted that, for an ideal gas at constant pressure, the volume is directly proportional to its temperature:
Gas | Charles's law
Molecular nitrogen is the gas form of nitrogen in the atmosphere. The chemical structure for nitrogen gas is N.
Ammoniacal nitrogen | Molecular nitrogen
Polynitrogen compounds have been well known and characterized by chemists for many years. Molecular nitrogen () was first isolated by Daniel Rutherford in 1772 and the azide ion () was discovered by Theodor Curtius in 1890. Discoveries of other related nitrogenous allotypes during the twentieth century include the aromatic molecule pentazole and the radical molecule . However, none of these complexes could be isolated or synthesized on a macroscopic scale like and azide; it was not until 1999 that a large scale synthesis was devised for a third nitrogen allotrope, the pentazenium () cation. This increased interest in polynitrogen compounds in the late twentieth century was due to the advance of computational chemistry which predicted that these types of molecules could be used as potential high energy density matter (HEDM) sources.
Tetranitrogen | History
The 1840s works of Justus von Liebig identified nitrogen as one of these important nutrients. Over time children used to play in the fields and farmers reckoned that that was the reason that their children were so strong. The same chemical compound could already be converted to nitric acid, the precursor of gunpowder and powerful explosives like TNT and nitroglycerine. Scientists also already knew that nitrogen formed the dominant portion of the atmosphere, but inorganic chemistry had yet to establish a means to fix it. Then, in 1909, German chemist Fritz Haber successfully fixed atmospheric nitrogen in a laboratory. This success had extremely attractive military, industrial and agricultural applications.
History of the Haber process | Introduction
Solid nitrogen is the solid form of the element nitrogen. It is an important component of the surfaces of Pluto and outer moons of the Solar System such as Neptune's Triton. Under low or moderate pressure solid nitrogen contains dinitrogen molecules held together by London dispersion forces. Non-molecular forms of solid nitrogen produced by extreme pressures have a higher energy density than any other non-nuclear material. Solid nitrogen was first made in 1884, by first liquefying hydrogen with evaporating liquid nitrogen, and then allowing the liquid hydrogen to freeze the nitrogen. Karol Olszewski achieved a world record lowest temperature in 1884 by evaporating vapour from solid nitrogen getting down to 48 K.
Solid nitrogen | Introduction
Harry Heaney is an Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry at Loughborough University. His research centres on heterocyclic compounds containing nitrogen.
Harry Heaney | Introduction
Daniel Rutherford (3 November 1749 – 15 December 1819) was a Scottish physician, chemist and botanist who is known for the isolation of nitrogen in 1772.
Daniel Rutherford | Introduction
In order to solve the problem of determining accurate nitrogen content in a sample, Kjeldahl developed a method which involves a two-step reaction: a distillation and a back titration. He found that ammonium salts can be produced by the reaction between organic compounds and sulfuric acid; this step is a digestion. Ammonium salts produced from this step were collected and, in a second process, reacted with lye. The ammonia produced in this step was distilled and dissolved in a standardized solution of hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid. Finally, this solution was back titrated with caustic soda to indirectly measure nitrogen.
Johan Kjeldahl | Kjeldahl method
Liebig denied the need to include nitrogen because it was available as gas from air. This conflict escalated into an academic fight between him and the "nitrogen advocates" which also ended the friendship between Stöckhardt and Liebig. Eventually, nitrogen containing fertilizers became a great success. His research in fume damage on plants especially by industrial exhaust was ground breaking. He fumigated plants with known amount of several chemical compounds, for example sulfur dioxide, to detect the minimal concentration at which damages occurs. A "Commission for the detection of the damage caused by smelters" was introduced and the state parliament of Saxony also dealt with damage caused by smelters after his results were published.
Julius Adolph Stöckhardt | Work
Sir William Ramsay (; 2 October 1852 – 23 July 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air" along with his collaborator, John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for their discovery of argon. After the two men identified argon, Ramsay investigated other atmospheric gases. His work in isolating argon, helium, neon, krypton and xenon led to the development of a new section of the periodic table.
William Ramsay | Introduction
Neon or xenon atoms can also be included in solid nitrogen in the β and δ phases. Inclusion of neon pushes the β−δ phase boundary to higher pressures. Argon is also very miscible in solid nitrogen. For compositions of argon and nitrogen with 60% to 70% nitrogen, the hexagonal form remains stable to 0 K. A van der Waals compound of xenon and nitrogen exists above 5.3 GPa. A van der Waals compound of neon and nitrogen was shown using Raman spectroscopy. The compound has formula (N)Ne. It has a hexagonal structure, with a=14.400 c=8.0940 at a pressure of 8 GPa.
Solid nitrogen | Noble gases
The nitrogen rule states that organic compounds containing exclusively hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and the halogens either have an odd nominal mass that indicates an odd number of nitrogen atoms are present or an even nominal mass that indicates an even number of nitrogen atoms are present in the molecular ion.
Mass (mass spectrometry) | Nitrogen rule
These samples were identified as helium by Lockyer and British physicist William Crookes. It was independently isolated from cleveite, in the same year, by chemists, Per Teodor Cleve and Abraham Langlet, in Uppsala, Sweden, who collected enough of the gas to accurately determine its atomic weight. Helium was also isolated by the American geochemist, William Francis Hillebrand, prior to Ramsay's discovery, when he noticed unusual spectral lines while testing a sample of the mineral uraninite. Hillebrand, however, attributed the lines to nitrogen. His letter of congratulations to Ramsay offers an interesting case of discovery, and near-discovery, in science.
Helium | Scientific discoveries
Nitrogen was first liquefied at the Jagiellonian University on 15 April 1883 by Polish physicists Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski.
Liquid nitrogen | History
In a chemical laboratory, it is prepared by treating an aqueous solution of ammonium chloride with sodium nitrite. Small amounts of the impurities NO and HNO are also formed in this reaction. The impurities can be removed by passing the gas through aqueous sulfuric acid containing potassium dichromate. Very pure nitrogen can be prepared by the thermal decomposition of barium azide or sodium azide.
Nitrogen | Production
He then went to University College, where he began to work with Sir William Ramsay. Travers helped Ramsay to determine the properties of the newly discovered gases argon and helium. They also heated minerals and meteorites in the search for further gases, but found none. Then in 1898 they obtained a large quantity of liquid air and subjected it to fractional distillation. Spectral analysis of the least volatile fraction revealed the presence of krypton. They examined the argon fraction for a constituent of lower boiling point, and discovered neon. Finally xenon, occurring as an even less volatile companion to krypton, was identified spectroscopically.
Morris Travers | Career
The Kjeldahl method or Kjeldahl digestion () in analytical chemistry is a method for the quantitative determination of nitrogen contained in organic substances plus the nitrogen contained in the inorganic compounds ammonia and ammonium (NH/NH). Without modification, other forms of inorganic nitrogen, for instance nitrate, are not included in this measurement. This method was developed by Johan Kjeldahl in 1883.
Kjeldahl method | Introduction
In 1887 he succeeded Alexander Williamson as the chair of Chemistry at University College London (UCL). It was here at UCL that red post celebrated discoveries were made. As early as 1885–1890 he published several notable papers on the oxides of nitrogen, developing the skills that he needed for his subsequent work. On the evening of 19 April 1894 Ramsay attended a lecture given by Lord Rayleigh. Rayleigh had noticed a discrepancy between the density of nitrogen made by chemical synthesis and nitrogen isolated from the air by removal of the other known components. After a short conversation he and Ramsay decided to investigate this.
William Ramsay | Career
Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds:
Nitrogen oxide | Introduction
The actual element was discovered several years later, and assigned the name neptunium.
Ausonium | Introduction
The Nitrogen Fix is a 1980 science fiction novel by Hal Clement, and illustrators David B. Mattingly, and Janet Aulisio. The plot revolves around a nomadic family in a future where all oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere has combined with nitrogen, so the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with traces of water, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide, and the seas are very dilute nitric acid.
The Nitrogen Fix | Introduction
Aerographene was discovered at Zhejiang University by a team of scientists led by Gao Chao. He and his team had already successfully created macroscopic materials made out of graphene. These materials were one-dimensional and two-dimensional. However, when synthesizing aerographene, the scientists instead created a three-dimensional structure. The synthesis was accomplished by the freeze-drying of carbon nanotube solutions and large amounts of graphene oxide. Residual oxygen was then removed chemically.
Aerographene | Discovery
He also thought that the lungs separate nitroaereus from air and pass it into the blood and that animal heat and muscle movement result from the reaction of nitroaereus with certain substances in the body. Accounts of these and other experiments and ideas were published in 1668 in his work "Tractatus duo" in the tract "De respiratione".
Oxygen | Early experiments
In atmospheric chemistry:
Nitrogen oxide | Atmospheric sciences
Nitrogen sublimes and eventually erupts through holes in the upper layer, carrying dust along with it and creating dark streaks.
Solid nitrogen | Natural occurrence
In 1898 Frank and Caro decoupled the process and produced calcium carbide and in a subsequent step reacted it with nitrogen to calcium cyanamide. The Ostwald process for the production of nitric acid was discovered in 1902. The Frank-Caro and Ostwald processes dominated industrial fixation until the discovery of the Haber process in 1909.
Nitrogen fixation | Frank-Caro process
With this discovery, they realized an entire class of gases was missing from the periodic table. During his search for argon, Ramsay also managed to isolate helium for the first time while heating cleveite, a mineral. In 1902, having accepted the evidence for the elements helium and argon, Dmitri Mendeleev included these noble gases as group 0 in his arrangement of the elements, which would later become the periodic table. Ramsay continued his search for these gases using the method of fractional distillation to separate liquid air into several components. In 1898, he discovered the elements krypton, neon, and xenon, and named them after the Greek words (, "hidden"), (, "new"), and (, "stranger"), respectively.
Noble gas | History
Nitrogen is the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at about seventh in total abundance in the Milky Way and the Solar System. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dinitrogen, a colourless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula N. Dinitrogen forms about 78% of Earth's atmosphere, making it the most abundant uncombined element. Nitrogen occurs in all organisms, primarily in amino acids (and thus proteins), in the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and in the energy transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate.
Nitrogen | Introduction
A ζ-N phase compressed to 95 GPa and then heated to over 600 K produces a new structure called θ nitrogen which has a uniform translucent appearance.
Solid nitrogen | θ
Ramsey successfully discovered all the other stable elements in the group which he named neon (Greek for new), krypton (Greek for hidden) and xenon (Greek for stranger). All the elements of this new group had one overwhelming characteristic; their lack of reactivity. It was this particular characteristic that brought to mind a name for the new group: the noble gases.
Chemistry: A Volatile History | William Ramsay discovers the noble gases
At this point he built a laboratory in his Dublin home in which he worked for the next seven years. During this early part of his life he had started making the discoveries that placed him in the first rank of chemists of his time. These included improvements in the determination of nitrogen in organic compounds, determination of the structure of polyhydric alcohols and the synthesis of Succinic and other acids from the corresponding cyanides. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1862.
Maxwell Simpson | Life
Based on the results of astronomical spectroscopy of nebula he proposed in 1911 the existence of several yet undiscovered elements. Coronium with an atomic weight of 0.51282, nebulium with a weight of 1.6281 and protofluorine with a weight of 2.361. Ira Sprague Bowen was able to attribute the spectroscopical lines of nebulium to doubly ionized oxygen making the new elements obsolete for their explanation.
John William Nicholson | Career
At the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory, Emmett's research goals were to study nitrogen fixation and its applications to the production of fertilizer, food, and explosives. Emmett also studied the synthesis and decomposition of ammonia over iron catalysts and gaseous adsorption during his 11 years at this lab. He used stable nitrogen isotopes to study the mechanisms of the catalytic reactions.
Paul Hugh Emmett | Nitrogen fixation
Raoul-Pierre Pictet (4 April 1846 – 27 July 1929) was a Swiss physicist. He was the first person to liquefy nitrogen.
Raoul Pictet | Introduction
Although his wife had forbidden him to do so, Schönbein occasionally experimented at home in the kitchen. One day in 1845, when his wife was away, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. After using his wife's cotton apron to mop it up, he hung the apron over the stove to dry, only to find that the cloth spontaneously ignited and burned so quickly that it seemed to disappear. Schönbein, in fact, had converted the cellulose of the apron, with the nitro groups (added from the nitric acid) serving as an internal source of oxygen; when heated, the cellulose was completely and suddenly oxidized.
Christian Friedrich Schönbein | Explosives
Fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, carbon compounds with spheroidal and tubular structures, have stimulated much research into the related field of materials science. The first fullerene was discovered in 1985 by Sir Harold W. Kroto of the United Kingdom and by Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl, Jr., of the United States. Using a laser to vaporize graphite rods in an atmosphere of helium gas, these chemists and their assistants obtained cagelike molecules composed of 60 carbon atoms (C60) joined together by single and double bonds to form a hollow sphere with 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces—a design that resembles a football, or soccer ball.
Organic chemistry | Fullerenes
It reacts with oxygen to give brown nitrogen dioxide and with halogens to give nitrosyl halides. It also reacts with transition metal compounds to give nitrosyl complexes, most of which are deeply coloured.
Nitrogen | Oxides
Biologically mediated reactions (e.g., assimilation, nitrification, and denitrification) strongly control nitrogen dynamics in the soil. These reactions typically result in N enrichment of the substrate and depletion of the product. The heavy isotope N was first discovered by S. M. Naudé in 1929, soon after heavy isotopes of the neighbouring elements oxygen and carbon were discovered. It presents one of the lowest thermal neutron capture cross-sections of all isotopes. It is frequently used in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to determine the structures of nitrogen-containing molecules, due to its fractional nuclear spin of one-half, which offers advantages for NMR such as narrower line width.
Nitrogen | Isotopes
Fehling determined the structure by comparing his results to the already known synthesis of hydrogen cyanide by heating ammonium formate. He coined the name "nitrile" for the newfound substance, which became the name for this group of compounds.
Nitrile | History
NO is nitrogen dioxide. NO2 or NO may also refer to:
NO2 (disambiguation) | Introduction
Thus, it has been proposed that "Synechocystis" originally possessed the ability to fix nitrogen gas, but lost the genes required for a fully functioning nitrogen fixation ("nif") gene cluster.
Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 | Evolutionary history
She and her group noticed that residual nitrogen remaining in the cavity systematically improved the RF superconductivity response. By baking the niobium SRF cavities at high temperatures in the presence of nitrogen, the Q factors more than tripled; dramatically reducing the cryogenic costs of the large accelerator facilities. She made the discovery of nitrogen doping by accident, hoping to create niobium nitride but instead found with her FNAL group - via material and surface science studies - that the real effect was due to nitrogen as interstitial. Superconducting radio frequency cavities generate high energy with high current and expel magnetic flux, which can result in power dissipation.
Anna Grassellino | Research and career
For the first time, "in situ" analysis of the atmosphere of another planet was performed and the data sent back to Earth; the analysis included chemical composition, temperature, and pressure. The measured ratio of carbon dioxide to nitrogen of about 13 corrected the previous estimates so much (an inverse ratio was expected in some quarters) that some scientists contested the observations. The main station detected no radiation belts; relative to Earth, the measured magnetic field was 3000 times weaker, and the hydrogen corona was 1000 times less dense. No atomic oxygen was detected. All the data suggested that water if it had been present, had leaked from the planet long before.
Venera 4 | Achievements
Solid nitrogen is normally made in a laboratory by evaporating liquid nitrogen in a vacuum. The solid produced is porous.
Solid nitrogen | Introduction
In 1787 the French physicist Jacques Charles found that oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and air expand to roughly the same extent over the same 80-kelvin interval. Later, in 1802, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac published results of similar experiments, indicating a linear relationship between volume and temperature:
Equation of state | Charles's law or Law of Charles and Gay-Lussac (1787)
It was discovered by Struve.
Nu Ceti | Introduction
Throughout the 1920s, physicists assumed that the atomic nucleus was composed of protons and "nuclear electrons". Under this hypothesis, the nitrogen-14 (N) nucleus would be composed of 14 protons and 7 electrons, so that it would have a net charge of +7 elementary charge units and a mass of 14 atomic mass units. This nucleus would also be orbited by another 7 electrons, termed "external electrons" by Rutherford, to complete the N atom. However problems with the hypothesis soon became apparent. Ralph Kronig pointed out in 1926 that the observed hyperfine structure of atomic spectra was inconsistent with the proton–electron hypothesis.
Discovery of the neutron | Problems of the nuclear electrons hypothesis
Armand Gautier noticed that rock contained argon (and also nitrogen) that was liberated when the rock was dissolved in acid however how the argon was combined in rock was ignored by the scientific community.
Argon compounds | Solid compounds
By the 1990s, Arnold Mulder's observations were just consistent with Richard's suggestion. In their anoxic denitrifying pilot reactor, ammonium disappeared at the expense of nitrite with a clear nitrogen production. The reactor used the effluent from a methanogenic pilot reactor, which contained ammonium, sulphide and other compounds, and nitrate from a nitrifying plant as the influent. The process was named "anammox," and was realized to have great significance in the removal of unwanted ammonium. The discovery of the anammox process was first publicly presented at the 5th European congress on biotechnology. By the mid-1990s, the discovery of anammox in the fluidized bed reactor was published.
Anammox | History
It was first synthesised in 1811 by Pierre Louis Dulong, who lost three fingers and an eye to its explosive tendencies. As a dilute gas it is less dangerous and is thus used industrially to bleach and sterilise flour. Nitrogen tribromide (NBr), first prepared in 1975, is a deep red, temperature-sensitive, volatile solid that is explosive even at −100 °C. Nitrogen triiodide (NI) is still more unstable and was only prepared in 1990. Its adduct with ammonia, which was known earlier, is very shock-sensitive: it can be set off by the touch of a feather, shifting air currents, or even alpha particles.
Nitrogen | Halides and oxohalides
The following year, Ramsay liberated another inert gas from a mineral called cleveite; this proved to be helium, previously known only in the solar spectrum. In his book "The Gases of the Atmosphere" (1896), Ramsay showed that the positions of helium and argon in the periodic table of elements indicated that at least three more noble gases might exist. In 1898 Ramsay and the British chemist Morris W. Travers isolated these elements—called neon, krypton, and xenon—from air brought to a liquid state at low temperature and high pressure. Sir William Ramsay worked with Frederick Soddy to demonstrate, in 1903, that alpha particles (helium nuclei) were continually produced during the radioactive decay of a sample of radium.
History of chemistry | Ramsay's discovery of the noble gases
However, if the nitrogen-14 (N) nucleus was composed of 14 protons and 7 electrons, an odd number of spin-1/2 particles, then the resultant nuclear spin should be half-integer. Kronig therefore suggested that perhaps "protons and electrons do not retain their identity to the extent they do outside the nucleus".
Discovery of the neutron | Problems of the nuclear electrons hypothesis
Nitrogen gas is an industrial gas produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air, or by mechanical means using gaseous air (pressurised reverse osmosis membrane or pressure swing adsorption). Nitrogen gas generators using membranes or pressure swing adsorption (PSA) are typically more cost and energy efficient than bulk delivered nitrogen. Commercial nitrogen is often a byproduct of air-processing for industrial concentration of oxygen for steelmaking and other purposes. When supplied compressed in cylinders it is often called OFN (oxygen-free nitrogen). Commercial-grade nitrogen already contains at most 20 ppm oxygen, and specially purified grades containing at most 2 ppm oxygen and 10 ppm argon are also available.
Nitrogen | Production
Smyth's early research was in spectroscopy, focusing on ionization of gases by impact with electrons as a means to study the gases' critical energy levels. He published his first research article, on the radiating potentials of nitrogen gas, in 1919; this became the basis of his first dissertation. In a 1922 article, he described a method for determining the ionization energy of a molecule using anode rays and demonstrated the method on mercury vapor. In the following year he used this same method to study nitrogen. He also published on the ionization of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, nitrogen dioxide, water vapor, sulfur dioxide, and carbon disulfide.
Henry DeWolf Smyth | Early career
This is in contrast to carbon containing compounds which have lower energies of formation for an equivalent number of single or double bonds than for a C≡C triple bond, allowing for the thermodynamically favorable formation of polymers. It is for this reason that the only allotropic form of nitrogen found in nature is molecular nitrogen () and why novel strategies of synthesizing polynitrogen allotropes in a cost-efficient manner are so highly sought after.
Tetranitrogen | Applications
These proteins interact to repress or set off the synthesis of enzymes that catalyze the multiple routes of nitrogen utilization appropriate to extant conditions of the environment. Kustu also reported that NtrA was one of the first examples of an alternative sigma factor, and thus it can be claimed that Sydney was responsible for the discovery of RpoN or sigma 54, which it later became more widely known as.
Sydney Kustu | Scientific Contributions
In the 1990s, Surgeon Commander James Francis found 'nitrogen narcosis' below 30m of water depth.
Institute of Naval Medicine | Diving
Major organic forms of nitrogen include proteins, amino acids, DNA, and RNA.
Ammoniacal nitrogen | Organic nitrogen