how would you ionize hydrogen atoms to get just protons?

[cameron marical]

how would you ionize hydrogen atoms to get just protons? Is that what people use in particle coliders when using proton to proton colisions?

 

thanks.

[swansont]

One way is to put a big electric field in place. It's what you do in a discharge tube for a variety of gases. The recombination often emits pretty light, according to the energy level structure.

 

At TRIUMF they actually add an electron to hydrogen to form H- to accelerate it, and the strip off the electrons in the process of directing the beam to its target. The stripper foil probably works by having a higher affinity for electrons, which AFAIK is similar (microscopically) to field ionization.

[GDG]

The easiest way to get protons is to drop an acid into water: your acid ("B-H") dissociates into B- and H+. Not that this would be very useful for particle accelerators...

[UC]

The easiest way to get protons is to drop an acid into water: your acid ("B-H") dissociates into B- and H+. Not that this would be very useful for particle accelerators...

 

This will exclusively make hydronium ions [ce] H3O^+ [/ce]. [ce] H^+ [/ce] is just shorthand, since the net effect is the motion of a proton, but it occurs exclusively as hydronium in aqueous solution, or appropriate species in other solvents.

 

The closest you can get to naked protons in a reaction mixture is 1:1 molar combination of antimony pentafluoride and liquid anhydrous hydrofluoric acid. This is the strongest known superacid.

 

Swansont is the guy to listen to here.

Edited May 9, 2009 by UC

[GDG]

This will exclusively make hydronium ions [ce] H3O^+ [/ce]. [ce] H^+ [/ce] is just shorthand, since the net effect is the motion of a proton, but it occurs exclusively as hydronium in aqueous solution, or appropriate species in other solvents.

 

The closest you can get to naked protons in a reaction mixture is 1:1 molar combination of antimony pentafluoride and liquid anhydrous hydrofluoric acid. This is the strongest known superacid.

 

Swansont is the guy to listen to here.

 

If you want to be technical about it, true. However, the H+ does not remain bound to any particular molecule for very long: the lifetime of a given H3O+ is on the order of 10^-13 seconds in water. I would call that, at best, a metastable complex.

 

Did he say that he needed a completely naked proton?