Abundant across the Vegas Strip in flashing signs and also in glow sticks won at Chucky Cheese by the thousands, neon is actually relatively rare on Earth. If you looked across Las Vegas Boulevard, the main stay of the strip, the overwhelming effect of the flashing, psychedelic neon lights plastered to every hotel, business, and shop would give you no indication that the element is uncommon on Earth or is colorless in inert state.
Neon, Greek for “new one,” is the second lightest noble gas and the least reactive of all elements. It was discovered in 1898 by chemist William Ramsay and Morris Travis almost by chance. They chilled a sample of the atmosphere until it became liquid, and then warmed that liquid. One of the gasses that boiled off happened to be neon. It was not until 17 years later that Georges Claude, a French engineer created the neon lights, which are electrified tubes of the gas that we associate with neon today.
Since neon is colorless in an inert state, the lights come from neon plasma, which has the most intense light discharge of all the noble gases. The gases natural color to the human eye is red, but with a spectroscope the lights can be transformed a green color. All other “neon” colors are not made from neon, but from other noble gases. The neon signs operate at high voltages while glow sticks, the other common form of neon, operate on low voltages.
In the universe, only hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon are more abundant than neon. The gas is rare on Earth because of its lightness and inertness that caused it to get trapped in the condensing gas and dust clouds created when Earth was formed. This is common on warm, small planets such as Earth. In Earth’s atmosphere neon is one part in 65,000, compared to one part in 750 in the universe and one part in 600 on the sun.
It is commercially produced by cryogenic fractional distillation of liquefied air, which means that air is chilled until it becomes a liquid and then boiled so that neon comes off in glass form, but don’t try that at home; its melting point is -415.46 degrees and its boiling point is -410.94 degrees. Neon will cost you, because of its rarity and the process in which it is developed.
While the flashing neon lights are hung throughout the Vegas Strip and out in cases at Chucky Cheese, neon is a beautiful and rare element. Don’t take for granted the multitude of the lights because while the may not be running out anytime soon, they still are rare. Remember, in less its green or red, its not really neon.
