By Emily Newton 
There may be a lot more elements out there, but currently we’ve discovered and classified 118 of them. Many of these elements are things you encounter in your daily life. Take a breath. That’s nitrogen, oxygen and a number of different trace elements that make up the air you breathe. Today, we’ll take a closer look at the properties of noble gases. What are the chemical properties of noble gases, their uses and where might you encounter them in your daily life?
Noble gases, as their name suggests, are almost always found in gaseous form. Thankfully, none of them are flammable. This is one of the primary properties of noble gases. These elements make up the last column of the periodic table, and this group is made up of seven elements:
| More Abundant | Less Abundant |
|---|---|
| Helium | Xenon |
| Neon | Radon |
| Argon | Oganesson |
| Krypton |
They were considered inert gases when they were discovered, because they don’t react with other elements. Scientists used to believe they were incapable of actually interacting with other elements, but modern scientists have disproved this.
While they were once considered rare, most of them are fairly abundant in the Earth’s crust. The only exception to this is oganesson, which is an artificially created element. Only a few atoms have ever been made.
Noble gases are considered stable — they have the maximum number of valence electrons possible in their outer layer, so they don’t have any need to interact with other elements.
What are the other properties and uses of noble gases?
They are all found naturally in their gaseous form, and all the members of this element group are capable of conducting electricity and emitting fluorescence, or light, when charged. They are also odorless and colorless.
The chemical properties of noble gases demand this state. All the gases need to maintain their stability is a consistent environment. That’s why helium, one of the first noble gases to be discovered, doesn’t react with the rubber of the balloon that holds it.
Two other important chemical properties of noble gases include their extremely low melting and boiling points.
Noble gases aren’t easy to spot, because they’re both colorless and odorless, so where might you encounter them in the real world?
Helium is the most abundant element in the universe, and, in a strange twist, we found it on the sun before we discovered it here on Earth! An astronomer noticed a yellow line in the sun’s spectrum, which he theorized was helium. It gets its name from Helios, the Greek god of the sun. There isn’t much of it in our atmosphere, only making up 0.0005% of the air we breathe, but we’ve found plenty of uses for this member of the noble gas family.
Neon is one of many noble gasses that scientists discovered while studying liquefied air. Most of the noble gasses make up a small portion of the air we breathe. Neon, for example, accounts for 0.0018% of the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s much more common once you leave the planet behind, becoming the fourth most abundant element in the universe.
It might not sound like much, but argon is the most abundant noble gas in the atmosphere, making up 0.93% of the air we breathe. Like most of the other elements in the noble gases family, it’s got a completely full outer electron shell, rendering it completely inert. It even gets its name from the Greek word argos, meaning inactive.
It might share its name with Superman’s home planet, but krypton exists right here on Earth. It’s named for kryptos, the Greek word meaning hidden, and makes up around 0.0001% of the planet’s atmosphere. It doesn’t have nearly as many uses as the other members of the noble gas family.
Xenon only makes up 0.0000087% of our atmosphere. It shares its name with the Greek word for stranger because it can be so hard to find. It might be a stranger, but we’ve still found a few uses for it.
Radon is colorless and odorless, just like the rest of the members of the noble gas family. The main difference is it’s also radioactive and can create a risk if it seeps into houses. There is very little radon gas in the atmosphere at any given time, but the decay of radioactive elements like radium and uranium creates more.
Households will want to track radon in their homes with indoor air quality monitors. It is naturally very abundant, but it’s not the safest element to be around for extended periods of time. It mostly leaks from rocks, like granite. So, if you live in a building with a significant amount of radon-producing materials, get your home tested to see if it’s impacting your family.
Oganesson is actually a metal, but it currently belongs to the noble gas family because of its atomic weight and location on the periodic table. It is an artificially created element, though, so its only current use is research and doesn’t have any similar applications for uses of other noble gases. Only a few atoms of it have been created so far, so if it did develop any uses outside of research, humans would have to find a way to replicate it quickly for commercial applications.
Even though you might not be mining noble gases, you can still encounter them in your daily life in the sneakiest ways. It could be the reason a medical treatment goes the way you want. It could also be the reason behind a successful movie night at the drive-in. The range of noble gases is long, extensive and versatile. Smile the next time you grab a balloon at a birthday party — you’ve got one of the noble gases in the palm of your hand!
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