Chemical Element: xenon
(Modern Latin: from Greek, xenon, "stranger"; gas)
Chemical-Element Information
Symbol: XeAtomic number: 54
Year discovered: 1898
Discovered by: Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916), British chemist, and Morris William Travers (1872-1961), British chemist.
- Xenon was discovered by Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers in 1898 in the residue left after evaporating liquid air components.
- Krypton and neon were discovered by the same methods and by the same workers only weeks earlier.
- They had to work with huge volumes of air to produce just a little xenon since it turned out that it is only present to the extent of about 0.087 ppm in the atmosphere.
- Xenon is used to a small extent in gaseous tube lighting, in negative glow lamps, and in lamps that produce flashes of light of extremely short duration such as are desired for high-speed photography.
- It was used experimentally in arc lamps for lighthouses.
Name in other languages:
French: xénon
German: Xenon
Italian: xeno
Spanish: xenón
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.