Hydrogen is what kind of element

Other Sources of Hydrogen Hydrogen gas can be prepared by reacting a dilute strong acid like hydrochloric acids with an active metal. Isotopes There are two important isotopes of hydrogen. It is a nucleus containing a single proton. Deuterium 2 H is another an isotope containing a proton and neutron, consisting of only 0. Commonly indicated with symbol D and sometimes called heavy hydrogen, deuterium is separated by the fractional distillation of liquid hydrogen but it can also be produced by the prolonged electrolysis of ordinary water.

Approximately , gallons of water will produce a single gallon of D 2 O, "heavy water". This special kind of water has a higher density, melting point, and boiling point than regular water and used as a moderator in some fission power reactors.

Deuterium fuel is used in experimental fusion reactors. Replacing protium with deuterium has important uses for exploring reaction mechanisms via the kinetic isotope effect. Tritium 3 H contains two neutrons in its nucleus and is radioactive with a It is can also be made in a lab from Lithium-6 in a nuclear reactor.

Tritium is also used in hydrogen bombs. It is very rare about 1 in every 1, atoms and is formed in the environment by cosmic ray bombardment. Most tritium is manufactured by bombarding Li with neutrons. Tritium is used in thermonuclear weapons and experimental fusion reactors. References Shultz, M. Journal of Chemical Education 86 9 , Rigden, John. Hydrogen: The Essential Element. The President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Banks, Alton. Journal of Chemical Education 66 10 , Petrucci, Ralph H. General Chemistry. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Life The Science of Biology. As such, the detection of a burning hydrogen leak is dangerous and requires a flame detector.

Because hydrogen is buoyant in air, hydrogen flames ascend rapidly and cause less damage than hydrocarbon fires. H 2 reacts with oxidizing elements, which in turn react spontaneously and violently with chlorine and fluorine to form the corresponding hydrogen halides.

H 2 does form compounds with most elements despite its stability. When participating in reactions, hydrogen can have a partial positive charge when reacting with more electronegative elements such as the halogens or oxygen, but it can have a partial negative charge when reacting with more electropositive elements such as the alkali metals. When hydrogen bonds with fluorine, oxygen, or nitrogen, it can participate in a form of medium-strength noncovalent intermolecular bonding called hydrogen bonding, which is critical to the stability of many biological molecules.

Compounds that have hydrogen bonding with metals and metalloids are known as hydrides. This species is essential in acid-base chemistry. Hydrogen naturally exists as three isotopes, denoted 1 H, 2 H, and 3 H. Deuterium and its compounds are used as non-radioactive labels in chemical experiments and in solvents for 1 H-NMR spectroscopy.

The gas is lighter than air. C hemical dangers: Heating may cause violent combustion or explosion. Reacts violently with air, oxygen, halogens and strong oxidants causing fire and explosion hazard. Metal catalysts, such as platinum and nickel , greatly enhance these reactions. High concentrations in the air cause a deficiency of oxygen with the risk of unconsciousness or death. Check oxygen content before entering area. No odor warning if toxic concentrations are present.

Measure hydrogen concentrations with suitable gas detector a normal flammable gas detector is not suited for the purpose. First aid: Fire: Shut off supply; if not possible and no risk to surroundings, let the fire burn itself out; in other cases extinguish with water spray, powder, carbon dioxide. Explosion: In case of fire: keep cylinder cool by spraying with water. Combat fire from a sheltered position.

Inhalation: Fresh air, rest. Artificial respiration may be needed. Refer for medical attention. Skin: Refer for medical attention. Hydrogen in the environment: Hydrogen forms 0. Environmental stability: hydrogen occurs naturally in the atmosphere. This week we hear what its like to be at the top, and number one, as we meet the King of the Elements. Here's Brian Clegg. Forget 10 Downing Street or Pennsylvania Avenue, the most prestigious address in the universe is number one in the periodic table, hydrogen.

In science, simplicity and beauty are often equated - and that makes hydrogen as beautiful as they come, a single proton and a lone electron making the most compact element in existence. Hydrogen has been around since atoms first formed in the residue of the Big Bang, and is the most abundant element by far. Despite billions of years of countless stars fusing hydrogen into helium it still makes up 75 per cent of the detectable content of the universe.

This light, colourless, highly flammable gas carries on its uniqueness by having the only named isotopes and some of the best known at that , deuterium with an added neutron in the nucleus and tritium with two neutrons.

Hydrogen is an essential for life, the universe and just about everything. Life, in fact, is multiply dependent on it. Without hydrogen we wouldn't have the Sun to give us heat and light. There would be no useful organic compounds to form the building blocks of life. And that most essential substance for life's existence, water, would not exist. It's only thanks to a special trick of hydrogen's that we can use water at all.

Hydrogen forms weak bonds between molecules, latching onto adjacent oxygen, nitrogen or fluorine atoms. It's these hydrogen bonds that give water many of its properties.

If they didn't exist, the boiling point of water would be below degrees Celsius. Liquid water would not feature on the Earth. Hydrogen was the unwitting discovery of Paracelsus, the sixteenth century Swiss alchemist also known as Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim. He found that something flammable bubbled off metals that were dropped into strong acids, unaware of the chemical reaction that was forming metal salts and releasing hydrogen, something a number of others including Robert Boyle would independently discover over the years.

However, the first person to realize hydrogen was a unique substance, one he called 'inflammable air,' was Henry Cavendish, the noble ancestor of William Cavendish who later gave his name to what would become the world's most famous physics laboratory in Cambridge. Between the s and s, Henry not only isolated hydrogen, but found that when it burned it combined with oxygen or 'dephlogisticated air' as it was called to produce water.

These clumsy terms were swept aside by French chemist Antoine Lavoisier who changed chemical naming for good, calling inflammable air 'hydrogen', the gene, or creator, of hydro, water. Because hydrogen is so light, the pure element isn't commonly found on the Earth. It would just float away. The prime components of air, nitrogen and oxygen, are fourteen and sixteen times heavier, giving hydrogen dramatic buoyancy.

This lightness of hydrogen made it a natural for one of its first practical uses - filling balloons. No balloon soars as well as a hydrogen balloon. The first such aerial vessel was the creation of French scientist Jacques Charles in , who was inspired by the Montgolfier brothers' hot air success a couple of months before to use hydrogen in a balloon of silk impregnated with rubber. Hydrogen seemed to have a guaranteed future in flying machines, reinforced by the invention of airships built on a rigid frame, called dirigibles in the UK but better known by their German nickname of Zeppelins, after their enthusiastic promoter Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

These airships were soon the liners of the sky, carrying passengers safely and smoothly across the Atlantic. But despite the ultimate lightness of hydrogen it has another property that killed off airships - hydrogen is highly flammable.

The destruction of the vast zeppelin the Hindenburg, probably by fire caused by static electricity, was seen on film by shocked audiences around the world. The hydrogen airship was doomed. Yet hydrogen has remained a player in the field of transport because of the raw efficiency of its combustion. Many of NASA's rockets, including the second and third stages of the Apollo Program's Saturn V and the Space Shuttle main engines, are powered by burning liquid hydrogen with pure oxygen.

More recently still, hydrogen has been proposed as a replacement for fossil fuels in cars. Here it has the big advantage over petrol of burning to provide only water.

No greenhouse gasses are emitted. The most likely way to employ hydrogen is not to burn it explosively, but to use it in a fuel cell, where an electrochemical reaction is used to produce electricity to power the vehicle.

Not everyone is convinced that hydrogen fuelled cars are the future, though. We would need a network of hydrogen fuel stations, and it remains a dangerous, explosive substance. At the same time, it is less efficient than petrol, because a litre of petrol has about three times more useful energy in it than a litre of liquid hydrogen if you use compressed hydrogen gas that can go up to ten times more.

The other problem is obtaining the hydrogen. It either comes from hydrocarbons, potentially leaving a residue of greenhouse gasses, or from electrolysing water, using electricity that may not be cleanly generated. But even if we don't get hydrogen fuelled cars, hydrogen still has a future in a more dramatic energy source - nuclear fusion, the power source of the sun. Fusion power stations are tens of years away from being practical, but hold out the hope of clean, plentiful energy. However we use hydrogen, though, we can't take away its prime position.

It is numero uno, the ultimate, the king of the elements. So it's the most abundant element, is essential for life on earth, fuels space rockets and could resolve our fossil fuel dependents. You can see why Brian Clegg classes hydrogen as number one. Now next week we meet the time keeper of the periodic table. One current use is in atomic clocks, though rubidium is considered less accurate than caesium.

The rubidium version of the atomic clock employs the transition between two hyperfine energy states of the rubidium isotope. These clocks use microwave radiation which is tuned until it matches the hyperfine transition, at which point the interval between wave crests of the radiation can be used to calibrate time itself.

Until then I'm Meera Senthilingam, thanks for listening and goodbye. Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists. There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld. Click here to view videos about Hydrogen.

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