Week 5 Assignments: The Chemistry of Color and Nutrition

"Inert Gas of the Week: Krypton"

Anyone familiar with Superman knows about his Achilles heel, kryptonite - a meteorite from the planet Krypton, Superman's planet of origin, which renders him powerless; its creation is a bit of Superman trivia (per Wikipedia) in that the 1943 radio show introduced the concept as a plot line and in order to provide the voice of Superman an occasional day off, and that it was only later that the substance made its way into the comic books. Perhaps a more salient point is that kryptonite in no way resembles krypton, nor was it ever intended to do so....

Nevertheless, this would be the reason that I chose krypton as my inert gas of the week, and one characteristic of krypton that does resemble its presence in the world of Superman is its natural brilliant green (and sometimes orange/yellow as well) spectral signature, which is the result of the production of krypton by the fission of uranium and plutonium.

Krypton (symbol Kr, atomic weight 36) occurs in trace amounts in our atmosphere and is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas. Combined with argon gas, krypton is used in fluorescent lamps which are more energy efficient - however, krypton costs about 100 times more than argon, so these lamps are actually not very cost effective. Krypton is also used in high speed photography, due to its being a brilliant white light source - and neon lights of varying colors are almost entirely krypton based.

Scientific applications for krypton would be in the krypton flouride laser, important in nuclear fusion energy research - and liquid krypton is used in particle physics experiments (neither of which I understand very well, but which are nevertheless important to mention here).

Colors in my kitchen:

Red and yellow raspberries
Blueberries
orange juice
green zucchini
orange butternut squash
green avocado
orange (colored) cheese
brown (chocolate) pudding
white (rice) pudding
yellow butter
black and green olives
yellow and red jello

Links:

What is important about the color of minerals? I was interested in this one, as I make jewelry and I love to use semi-precious stones vs. glass or plastic beads, and over the years I have become familiar with many of the minerals shown and in particular with their variations of color. What was interesting to me was to find that the color of a particular stone is not only determined by the various minerals in it, but also has to do with light frequencies and reflection and so on...which I suppose probably should have been obvious to me.

I was also interested in the link about luminescence, and to discover the different energy sources which produce this kind of light.


Update on article regarding GM contaminated rice in the UK