Like, did someone just come across helium one day, not knowing what it was, and decided to start collecting it in containers? What about neon, hydrogen, and all the others? How did they know where to look, and even when found, how did they collect it without all the gas escaping into the air around them?
In: Earth Science
The gases on the period table where discovered gradually. After we started to make the period table logic predicted that if there is an element with 4 electrons there is probably one with 1, 7, 8 and so on. It was just a matter than of discovering a pure form and naming it. Oxygen was unknown for a long time the only hint people had was that- apparently. A rat under a dome died when closed for to long but a rat under a dome with a plant inside lived longer.
About collecting it. Most non-royal gases (so everything that isn’t helium, neon, argon, xenon) etc. are in other stuff like water is just Hydrogen and Oxygen. You can do something called an „electrolyzing“ process where you use metal and electricty to split up the water and the oxygen goes to one and Hydrogen to the other pole.
That dosn’t only work with water it works with lots of fluid. Royal Gases are a bit tricky. Idk how people did it in the past but nowadays we literally cool down normal breathable air until its liquid. In our air are alot more things than Oxygen. Actually only ~20% of our air is. Its mostly Nitrogen and oh- Royal gases, would you look at that.
Anyway you cool it down till its a liquid, however the different gases have different temperatures where they start to become liquids. So by emptying to tank in between you can, over time, split up the different gases. Imagine if you had a sludge of molten metal with- lets just say. Gold and Iron. Golds melting point is way lower than Irons so the Iron will become solid first, you can than take the iron away and only the gold remains. It works the same with the gases just that you have to manually cool it down.
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