Today a blue plaque is being erected outside a house in Notting Hill, London to commemorate the life and work of Sir William Ramsey. This is part of the way in which the UK is celebrating the International Year of Chemistry. William Ramsey (1852-1916) was a Scottish chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his discovery of the noble gases. The house in Notting Hill is where Ramsay lived while he was Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London. What Ramsey did was to compare the molar mass of the ‘nitrogen’ obtained from air once the oxygen, carbon dioxide and water had been removed with the molar mass of nitrogen gas obtained by chemical means. The very slight difference led him to discover argon which then led him further to discover helium, neon, krypton and xenon - a whole group of the Periodic Table which was previously unknown. 

I wonder if a modern chemist would have reached the same conclusion?  The difference in mass and density was very small and could easily have been put down to ‘experimental error’ or attributed to the uncertainties inherent in the apparatus. Are we teaching our students the skills to physically perform experiments with such care and dexterity?  I often debate with Chris Hamper (who runs the InThinking Physics website) about the validity of simulated experiments. If Ramsey had relied totally upon simulations for his experimental work then I very much doubt if he would have been successful. A simulation is only as good as the people that write the programme. How could someone who has absolutely no knowledge that a whole group of ‘inert’ elements exists incorporate the presence of argon into a simulation package. Don’t misunderstand me. I can see that simulations have many excellent points (virtual libraries and combinatorial chemistry to mention just two) but they should never be allowed to replace completely ‘real’ hands-on practical chemistry’.

Without Ramsay’s discoveries we would not have neon advertising. The first neon sign was demonstrated by George Claude at the Paris Motor show in 1910. The video “How neon tubes are made” produced for Bright Neon Signs is worth watching.