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| Hydrogen Of all the gasses in the universe, hydrogen has the smallest, lightest molecules, so naturally it is the least dense. Hydrogen is a bit explosive, but so long as you keep the sparks and flames to a minimum, it is a good choice of gas for airships, blimps and baloons. Here is where the English language lets us down rather badly. How often have you heard a person anounce that "Hydrogen is lighter than air" ? That is quite wrong, because LIGHT is the opposite of HEAVY, not DENSE. Up until now, intelligent, well informed persons have been forced to use the word "light" to describe that property of hydrogen that makes it float, simply because a suitable word for this concept does not exist in English. Here is where I think I can render a great service to the English speaking world. I propose that the reciprocal or inverse of density be christened "puffiness". Puffiness is defined as the volume per unit mass (of a substance). That would make the S.I. unit of puffiness the cubic meter per kilogram. Many S.I units have been named in honour of famous scientists, for example: the newton(N) , the ampere (A) , the pascal (Pa). At risk of being accused of having a "puffy ego" I respectfully apply to join the ranks of these great men, by proposing my own name (Crawford) for this important physical quantity. That would make the unit of puffiness the crawford(Cw). A mole of hydrogen has a mass of 2.00g and a volume of 22.4L at standard temperature and pressure, so that would give it a density of 0.089 g/L. Its not very dense, no wonder stuff floats! On the other hand, hydrogen is extremely puffy, if you do the math you will find its puffiness comes to 11.2 Cw So lets hear it for hydrogen, puffiest gas on the periodic table! |
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