Talk:Erasmus Haworth
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[edit] Discovery of helium in natural gas
Erasmus Haworth is notable in the discovery of helium in natural gas. The following is copied from helium, and should be culled for integrating information into this article:
- After an oil drilling operation in 1903 in Dexter, Kansas, USA produced a gas geyser that would not burn, Kansas state geologist Erasmus Haworth collected samples of the escaping gas and took them back to the University of Kansas at Lawrence where, with the help of chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland, he discovered that the gas contained, by volume, 72% nitrogen, 15% methane—insufficient to make the gas combustible, 1% hydrogen, and 12% of an unidentifiable gas.[1] With further analysis, Cady and McFarland discovered that 1.84% of the gas sample was helium.[2] Far from being a rare element, helium was present in vast quantities under the American Great Plains, available for extraction from natural gas.
