Krypton is a colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas used in fluorescent lamps.
Core Principles & Analysis
William Ramsay and Morris Travers discovered krypton in 1898 in the residue left after evaporating liquid air, naming it from the Greek for 'hidden one'.
Though a noble gas, it is not perfectly inert, forming krypton difluoride under extreme conditions; from 1960 to 1983 the metre was defined by an orange-red spectral line of krypton-86.
Krypton fills high-intensity airport runway flash lamps and premium insulated windows, and krypton fluoride excimer lasers pattern microchips in photolithography.