We live in an amazing time. Every day new and innovative apps change the way we interact with the world. Map Your Hike apps have changed the way I work out by mapping my weekend hikes. I then share those accomplishments with my community of friends and also follow celebrity achievements.
I recently followed a small team in pseudo real time as they attempted to summit the tallest mountain in the world… Mt. Everest… without supplemental oxygen. They documented their journey on social media. I was virtually invited into their tent, and I followed their ascension route over a period of weeks as the climbers acclimated to the high altitude.
Show your Support. Exclusive Helium Merch including Tees, Hoodies, Stickers and Beanies. The ideal gas law is: pV = nRT, where n is the number of moles, and R is universal gas constant. The value of R depends on the units involved, but is usually stated with S.I. Units as: R = 8.314 J/molK. For air, one mole is 28.97 g (=0.02897 kg), so we can do a unit conversion from moles to kilograms. = 8.314 ∙ × 1 0.02897 ˙ =.
What it Takes to Make a Breakthrough
To climb Mt. Everest, a lot of things have to come together to make the impossible possible. Technological advances in various disciplines (GPS, cold weather gear, accurate weather forecasting) now make summiting a possibility for hundreds of adventurers each year. The first known attempts to climb Everest started in 1922, and it took over 30 years before Hillary and Tenzing made the first summit in 1953. Twenty-two years later (1975), Junko Tabei (from Japan) became the first woman on the summit (and 38th overall).
We often forget the years of investment required to make a breakthrough. Our helium sealed (HelioSeal™) hard drive is the perfect example. At high altitude, the lack of oxygen becomes deadly for those attempting to summit Everest. The human body needs air. So does a hard drive. The read/write heads inside of a hard drive actually fly over the disk surface on what we call an “air-bearing”.
R Constant For Helium
Without air, the heads will crash into the disk. But the problem with air is that it creates turbulence. So engineers sought after a less dense element. Hydrogen is the least dense element. But it won’t work. The 1937 Hindenburg disaster provides a good lesson for why the use of flammable hydrogen is a bad idea. Helium is the second lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe. As Helium is inert, it doesn’t react with anything. Being 1/7th the density of air, replacing the air with helium reduces turbulence inside the drive, delivering a myriad of advantages.
The Helium Advantage
Helium comes with various advantages that deliver great benefits to end-users:
- Squeezing tracks closer together means more data tracks per disk = more data per HDD.
- Thinner disks = more disks (5 disks are now 8 disks) = more data per HDD.
- Thinner disks require less power to spin.
- Helium creates less drag, requiring less power to spin the disks.
- Less drag = less noise. (Helium drives are less annoying to listen to!)
- Sealed drives keep helium in and keepcontaminants out.
Keeping Helium In
HDD manufacturers have historically used helium in the manufacturing process when writing the delicate servo code, similar to putting parking stripes on a newly paved parking lot. The servo code helps the drive know where the data is stored on the otherwise “blank” disk and must be very accurate. Helium enables very accurate servo writing, but after the servo code is written, the helium is replaced by air.
The reason is simple. While the small size of helium benefits servo writing, it is extremely difficult to seal the helium within the drive. Anyone who has purchased a helium filled balloon knows that after a few days, the helium leaks out. Investing over 15 years of R&D, HGST solved the sealing challenge and launched our first high volume 6TB HDD (Ultrastar He6) years before the competition. As I mentioned above, sealing the microscopic helium particles in not only keeps helium from leaking but it also keeps much larger contaminant particles out, improving drive reliability. Although not an approved use, we have demonstrated the seal’s effectiveness by immersing running drives in a tank of non-conductive cooling liquid.
[Tweet “The Rise of Helium Drives #HDD #cloud”]
Thinner Atmosphere Allows Thinner Media
Years before the first consumer smartphones became mainstream (2007), our San Jose Research Center demonstrated a helium sealed prototype HDD. Research continued as we installed our first laser welding machine over a decade ago. Constrained to the 1” high form factor, we used thin disks to increase the number of platters from 5 to 7 disks to reach from 6 to 10TB. Using even thinner media, and incredible mechanical ingenuity, we packed in 8 disks for our 12TB Ultrastar He12. All while still maintaining the same enterprise specifications as previous generations.
Rise Above the Rest
Public cloud service providers now offer inexpensive storage and compute with a world-wide footprint. Any startup can deploy a new app without first building a data center. Low storage cost enables new applications, and they can instantly compete with established companies.
The key to achieving the best TCO is to reduce power consumption while packing more data into the same HDD footprint. Helium makes today’s high capacity hard drives a possibility. We are now shipping our largest HDD ever, the HGST Ultrastar He12. At 12TB, the He12 provides 50% more capacity than the nearest 8TB air product. And uses 54% less power per TB. All enabled by HelioSeal technology.
A Recipe for Innovation
You might think of storage as a simple ingredient, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We spent decades perfecting HelioSeal, or helium sealing, starting way back “in the olden days” before smart phones even existed.
The perfect recipe for innovation combines massive storage mixed well with a dab of compute, and then filled with a great idea.
Maybe we didn’t help the climbers climb Everest, but we certainly provided key storage technology that enables them to share their experiences with the world. When your friends share a photo of their kids on social media, or share a video clip of their kitten on a popular video site, you can know that without helium and high capacity storage that we pioneered, none of it would be possible.
We provide the key storage ingredients for the best ideas.
Learn more about HelioSeal and our helium drives here.
| San José State University |
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| applet-magic.com Thayer Watkins Silicon Valley & Tornado Alley USA |
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and the Spectrum of Helium: A Modified Version of the Bohr Model |
Neils Bohr's model of the atom provided a wonderfully accurate explanation of thespectrum of hydrogen, but when it was applied to the spectrum of heliumit failed. Werner Heisenberg developed a modification of Bohr's analysis but it involvedhalf-integral values for the quantum numbers. Bohr considered non-integral values of quantum numbers nonsensical in terms of the logic of quantum theory. There was a crisis inquantum theory that ultimately led to the creation in the 1920's of the new quantumtheory which became known as quantum mechanics.
This is an attempt to apply the Old Quantum Physics to explaining the spectrum of helium. The energy level of an electronin an atom in which the effective charge is Z is −RZ²/n² where R is the Rydberg constant and n is the quantum number of the electron (its number of angular momentum units). The quantum number n is necessarily a positive integer, butZ can be either an integer or half-integer such as {1/2, 3/2, 5/2, … }.
To see how a half-integer value for Z can arise consider a unit negative charge distributed throughout a thin spherical shell of radius r.From a point within the shell; i.e., a point at a distance from the center of the shell less than r, the charge cancels out and the effect of the charge on the shell is zero. From a point whose distance for the center of the shell is greater than r the effectof the charge is the same as if it were concentrated at the center of the shell. Thus as distance from the center of the shell goesfrom a value greater than r to one less than r the effect charge goes from −1 to zero. Thus at a distance of exactly r theeffective charge has to −½. Thus for an electron in a shell the effect of the other electrons in the shell is thesame as if one half of the charge of the other electrons were concentrated at the center of the shell.
For the two electrons of a helium atom, if they have different quantum numbers and hence are in different shells the outer electronexperiences an effective charge in the nucleus of 2−1=+1 and the inner electron experiences an effective charge of 2−0=+2.But if the electrons have the same quantum number they both experience an effective charge in the nucleus of 2−½=+3/2.
Energy Levels
Let n1 and n2 be the quantum numbers of the two electrons in a helium atom. For simplicity assume thatn1≥n2. If n1>n2 then the energy levels of the electrons are
−R(2−1)²/n1²
and
−R(2−0)²/n2²
thus the total is
−R[1/n1² + 4/n2²]
If n1=n2 then the energy levels are both
−R(2−½)²/n1²
so the total is
−2R(9/4)/n1² = −(9/2)/n1².
Energy Level Changes
For the case in which n1>n2 and n1 is reduced to n3 but n3>n2the energy change is
ΔE = R[1/n3² − 1/n1²]
This portion of the spectrum would be the same as for hydrogen.
For n1>n2 and n2 is reduced to n4 the energy change is
ΔE = R[4/n4² − 4/n1²] = 4R[1/n4² − 1/n1²]
The transition of an outer electron from quantum number n1>n2 to n2 involves anenergy change of
−R(9/2)/n2² − [ −R(1/n1² + 4/n2²)]
which is equal to
R[(4−9/2)/n2² + 1/n1²)] = R[1/n1² − ½/n2²]
The transition of an electron from quantum number n2=n1 to n4<n1involves an energy change of
−R[1/n1² + 4/n4²] − [− R(9/2)/n1²]
or, equivalently
R[(9/2−1)/n1² − 4/n4²] = R[(7/2)/n1² − 4/n4²]
Finally there is the case in which the quantum number of the outer electron changes from n1>n2 ton3 which is less than n2.The energy change is
ΔE = −R(1/n2+4/n2²) − [−R(1/n1² + 4/n2²)]
or
R[(4−1)/n2² + (1/n1² − 4/n3²)]
R[3/n2² + 1/n1² − 4/n3²]
There are thus five cases. If the helium model is valid then for any spectral line of helium there should exist integersolutions for at least one of the five cases.
The Helium Spectrum
There are three spectral lines for helium, {438.793 nm, 443.755 nm, 447.148 nm} for which the best explanation is a transition of an electron from quantum number 5 to quantum number 2 while the other electron remains at quantum number 1. The wave length is given by the equation
ΔE = hc/λ = R(1/n3² − 1/n1²)
hence
1/λ = (R/hc)(1/n3² − 1/n1²)
The value of the coefficient (R/hc) is 1.097373×107 m−1. If n1=5 and n3=2 then thewavelength for the transition should be 433.937 nm. For the spectral line at 438.793 this is in error by aboutr 1.1 percent.For the other two lines the computed value is in error by 2.3 and 3.0 percent, respectively.
For the 471.314 nm, 492.193 nm and 501.5675 nm spectral lines the closest fit is for n1=4 and n3=2 withn2=1. For this transition the wavelength should be 486.009 nm. For the 471.314 nm line the computed value is 3.1 percent too high. For the 492.193 nm and 501.5675 nm lines the computed values are 1.3 percent and 3.2 percent too low.
Another line of the helium spectrum is at 667.815 nm. The best explanation for this line is a transition from n1=3 to n3=2. The computed wavelength for this transition is 656.112 nm, an error of 1.8 percent.
Specific Gas Constant Helium
Here are these results in tabulated form:
| Comparison of Measured Helium Spectrum Lines with Values Computed from a Modified Version of the Bohr Model | ||
|---|---|---|
| Measured wavelength | Computed wavelenth | Error |
| 438.793 nm | 433.937 nm | -1.1% |
| 471.314 nm | 486.009 nm | +3.1% |
| 492.193 nm | 486.009 nm | -1.3% |
| 501.5675 nm | 486.009 nm | -3.2% |
| 667.815 nm | 656.112 nm | -1.8% |
Unfortunately there is no readily available computations of the Helium spectrum using the New Quantum Theory (Quantum Mechanics)for comparison.