Krypton is name
of the fictional home planet of Superman currently in the local cinemas as the
Man of Steel.
Krypton is a chemical element with symbol Kr
and atomic number 36. It is a member of group 18 (noble gases) elements. A
colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas, krypton occurs in trace amounts in
the atmosphere, is isolated by fractionally distilling liquified air, and is
often used with other rare gases in fluorescent lamps. Krypton is inert for
most practical purposes.
Krypton gas discharge tube
Krypton was
discovered in Britain in 1898 by Sir William Ramsay, a Scottish chemist, and Morris
Travers, an English chemist, in residue left from evaporating nearly all
components of liquid air. Neon was discovered by a similar procedure by the
same workers just a few weeks later. William
Ramsay was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovery of a series
of noble gases, including krypton.
Krypton is
characterized by several sharp emission lines (spectral signatures) the
strongest being green and yellow. It is
one of the products of uranium fission. Solidified
krypton is white and crystalline with a face-centered cubic crystal structure,
which is a common property of all noble gases (except helium, with a hexagonal
close-packed crystal structure).
Kryptonite on the other hand is a fictional form of
a radioactive element from Superman's home planet of Krypton. It is famous for
being the ultimate natural weakness of Superman and most other Kryptonians, and the word Kryptonite has since
become synonymous with an Achilles' heel—the one weakness of an
otherwise invulnerable hero. In the
Superman films Kryptonite is green although the original stores there were many
colour variations.
Superman's worst nightmare!
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