Neon

Imagine a gas that’s invisible and doesn’t smell, but when you zap it with electricity, it lights up! That’s neon! It’s like a secret superhero gas.

Neon is a noble gas, which means it likes to be alone and doesn’t easily mix with other things. It’s lighter than air, so if you could fill a balloon with it, it would float upwards! It’s element number 10 on the periodic table, which is like a big chart of all the building blocks of everything.

Two super-smart scientists, Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers, discovered neon in 1898. They were looking at the air and realized there were some mysterious gases hiding in it. When they made one of these gases glow with electricity, it shone a brilliant red-orange!

They knew it was something brand new and called it ‘neon’ because in Greek, ‘neos’ means ‘new’. It was like finding a hidden treasure in the air!

The most famous thing neon does is make signs glow! When electricity passes through neon gas in a tube, it lights up with that signature red-orange color. You see this in old-school movie theater signs and cool shop windows. Neon is also used in special lasers that have a red light. It’s like the gas is a tiny light bulb that can be bent into any shape you want!

Neon is actually pretty common in space! Stars make neon when they are busy cooking up new elements. It’s the fifth most common thing in the whole universe. But here on Earth, it’s much harder to find. It’s mostly found in the air we breathe, but in tiny amounts. Because it likes to escape and doesn’t stick to things easily, it’s not found much in rocks or on planets like ours.