Graham's law has come to denote an important class of finely divided materials. Around the time Graham did his work, the concept of molecular weight was being established largely through the measurements of gases. Daniel Bernoulli suggested in 1738 in his book Hydrodynamica that heat increases in proportion to the velocity, and thus kinetic energy, of gas particles. Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro also suggested in 1811 that equal volumes of different gases contain equal numbers of molecules. Thus, the relative molecular weights of two gases are equal to the ratio of weights of equal volumes of the gases. Avogadro's insight together with
Industrial gas since all isotopes are radiogenic nuclides from radioactive decay. (It is not known if any synthetic elements with atomic number above 108 are gases.) The elements which are stable two atom homonuclear molecules at standard temperature and pressure (STP), are hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O), plus the halogens fluorine (F) and chlorine (Cl). The noble gases are all monatomic. In the industrial gases industry the term "elemental gases" (or sometimes less accurately "molecular gases") is used to distinguish these gases from molecules that are also chemical compounds. These elements are all nonmetals. Radon is chemically stable, but it