Chemical Element: krypton
(Greek: kryptos, "hidden"; gas)
Chemical-Element Information
Symbol: KrAtomic number: 36
Year discovered: 1898
Discovered by: William Ramsay (1852-1916), British chemist, and Morris William Travers (1872-1961), British chemist.
- Krypton was discovered in 1898 by Sir William Ramsay and his student Morris Travers in the residue left after liquid air had nearly boiled away.
- Krypton was left in the residue after boiling away water, oxygen, nitrogen, helium, and argon from the sample of air.
- Neon was discovered by a similar procedure by the same workers just a few weeks later.
- Krypton is characterized by its brilliant green and orange spectral lines.
- The spectral lines of krypton are easily produced and some are very sharp.
- Under normal conditions krypton is a colorless, odorless, and fairly expensive gas.
- Krypton is available commercially in cylinders at high pressure.
- It finds some application in gaseous tube lighting and in negative glow lamps for Christmas-tree ornaments, etc.
- Krypton also is used in a type of lamp that produces a flash of light of extremely short duration; such bulbs are employed in high-speed photography.
- If krypton and xenon were used in place of argon to fill hot-filament incandescent lamps, the efficiency and life of the lamps would be increased but so would their cost.
Name in other languages:
French: krypton
German: Krypton
Italian: cripto
Spanish: kriptón
Information about other elements may be seen at this Chemical Elements List.
A special unit about words that include chemo-, chem- may be seen here.