Krypton

What is krypton?

Sir William Ramsey

Discovered by Sir William Ramsey, M.W. Travers of Great Britain in 1898, krypton means 'hidden' in Greek. Ramsey was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1904. He was given it for the discovery of many noble gasses, one of them being krypton. Krypton is often inert, but it CAN for it's own molecules. The first krypton molecule, krypton difluoride, was discovered in 1963, long after Ramsey was dead.












Fun Facts About Krypton:

• Krypton is also the name of the world which Superman comes from in the movies.
• Earth's atmosphere has approximately 1 part per million abundance of krypton.
• Light bulbs containing krypton gas always produce a very bright white light used often in photography and runway lights.
• Krypton is often used in ion lasers and gas lasers.
• Krypton can be gotten by fractional distillation of air.

I apologize for the length of this post! My sources did not give me much information on the topic.... it seems krypton info is pretty elusive.