Eli5: How did humans first find the gasses on the periodic table we use today, and how did they go about collecting it?

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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

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They found out things by doing “stuff” and recording the results.

So they would add X to Y and see what happened, then they would put a flame above it, then do something different. All the time while logging everything that happened so they could replicate it.

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