Mondo Knows Facts
Argon was discovered in leftover air
Ramsay and Rayleigh removed the known gases from air and found a stubborn remainder In 1894 the pair passed air over hot copper to strip out oxygen and then over magnesium to take out nitrogen. A small residue refused to react with anything, so they named it argon, from the Greek word for lazy. Argon makes up just under one percent of the atmosphere. It sits in Mondo's science collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: chemistry, elements, gases
Argon was discovered in leftover air: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Ramsay and Rayleigh removed the known gases from air and found a stubborn remainder. The figure is taken from Royal Society of Chemistry, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a science fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Science shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.