Why isn't noble gas chemistry 30 years older? The failed (?) 1933 experiment of Yost and Kaye

Labinger, Jay A.

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127912 Copy

Description

Title

Why isn't noble gas chemistry 30 years older? The failed (?) 1933 experiment of Yost and Kaye

Author(s)

Labinger, Jay A.

Issue Date

2015-03-15

Keyword(s)

• History
• Chemistry

Abstract

The first report of a noble gas compound, by Neil Bartlett in 1962, was quickly followed by a number of others. Of course there had been previous attempts, of which the best documented is probably that of Caltech inorganic chemistry professor Donald Yost and his student Albert Kaye; details of their unsuccessful experiments aimed at getting xenon to react with fluorine or chlorine were published in JACS in 1933. After Bartlett's success, a number of commentators looked back to Yost's paper and offered a variety of possible reasons for Yost's failure. Examination of the actual details of Yost’s paper, in comparison with those of the later successful reports, refutes all of those interpretations, whereas one particular detail of Yost’s experiment, which appears to have gone completely unnoticed, provides a plausible explanation for why Yost did not beat Bartlett and his contemporaries by nearly 30 years, and strongly suggests that with a little more effort and/or luck he could well have done so.

Publisher

Division of the History of Chemistry

ISSN

1053-4385

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

article

Language

eng

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127912

DOI

https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2015v040p029

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Copyright 2015 Division of the History of Chemistry

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