The Westport Library Resource Guides: Hydrogen (H): Other Nonmetals

What is Hydrogen?

Hydrogen (H), a colourless, odourless, tasteless, flammable gaseous substance that is the simplest member of the family of chemical elements. The hydrogen atom has a nucleus consisting of a proton bearing one unit of positive electrical charge; an electron, bearing one unit of negative electrical charge, is also associated with this nucleus. Under ordinary conditions, hydrogen gas is a loose aggregation of hydrogen molecules, each consisting of a pair of atoms, a diatomic molecule, H₂. The earliest known important chemical property of hydrogen is that it burns with oxygen to form water, H₂O; indeed, the name hydrogen is derived from Greek words meaning “maker of water.” Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica

The History

In the early 1500s the alchemist Paracelsus noted that the bubbles given off when iron filings were added to sulfuric acid were flammable. In 1671 Robert Boyle made the same observation. Neither followed up their discovery of hydrogen, and so Henry Cavendish gets the credit. In 1766 he collected the bubbles and showed that they were different from other gases. He later showed that when hydrogen burns it forms water, thereby ending the belief that water was an element. The gas was given its name hydro-gen, meaning water-former, by Antoine Lavoisier.

In 1931, Harold Urey and his colleagues at Columbia University in the US detected a second, rarer, form of hydrogen. This has twice the mass of normal hydrogen, and they named it deuterium. Continue reading from Royal Society of Chemistry

Hydrogen Facts

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. About 3 billion cubic feet of hydrogen are produced in the United States per year, according to Los Alamos. Hydrogen is the main component of Jupiter and the other gas giant planets. Hydrogen is used to make ammonia for fertilizer, in a process called the Haber process, in which it is reacted with nitrogen. Continue reading from LiveScience