Monday, January 1, 2018

ions - Can you in reality give neon a charge of +8?


First off, I am currently confused about why neon can even be ionized at all. But since it can be ionized, this is the energy required to give a mole of neon a charge of +8: 207,390,000 joules!! Or ~0.5 GJ! Giving one-fifth of a kilogram of neon the maximum charge would be like the energy from 50 armor-piercing rounds of the ISU-150 assault tank, or approximately one Tour-de-France! Charging up one kilo of neon would be basically either throwing a lightning bolt or melting a tonne of steel.


My question is, what insidious chemical or procedure could rip away all of neon's electrons like that? Or is it just simply impossible to do?


I suspect that it is possible to do (otherwise how would they be able to calculate the energy expenditure), but how is the question.



Answer




Of course you can take all the electrons off an atom - it is then called "fully stripped" in atomic physics. You don't need to do it to an entire mole, mind you. In accelerators one would send energetic neon ions through a background gas or a thin foil, and the interactions will result in various charge states coming out, up to and including fully stripped.


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