1 You have any idea how expensive Xenon is? It isn't at all easy to come by. According to this site: The rare gases Xenon (Xe), Krypton (Kr) and Neon (Ne) are sourced from the air we breathe. All three are obtained from air separation plants, such as those built and operated by Linde. Because of their very low natural concentration in air, it is only economically viable to recover these rare gases from very large air separation facilities (greater than 1,000 tons of oxygen per day). After nitrogen, oxygen and argon are pulled off of the distillation column, Ne is then recovered by splitting a crude neon stream from the plant and processing it in a separate purification system. For the Xe and Kr, a stream containing a mixture of crude xenon and krypton is finally extracted from the plant and processed in another separate purification and distillation system. It turns out that Xenon makes up .09 ppm of air. If the plant is producing a thousand metric tons of oxygen per day, it will produce less than 430 grams of xenon per day. Yikes!

2 Questionable content??? ME?!?!?!

3 Steven - Yep. I was reading up on it and I found the price of $10 per litre. Took me a while to figure out that meant one litre at STP. It's considered too expensive even to use as an anaesthetic. This isn't "Pixy's Practical Party Hints". I'll save those for another day.

4 That's so random. I love it. Anyway, who says parties have to be practical? How practical is having a truckload of artifical snow in Texas, in the summer, for a kid's fourth birthday party?