HISTORY

 

M.W. Travers

 How can you discover something that’s colorless, odorless and tasteless? Well, Sir William Ramsey and M.W. Travers did just that. Not only did they discover xenon but krypton among other noble gases, like neon and argon. In fact they obtained their first sample of xenon while testing an impure sample of krypton, in 1898. They obtained the xenon by a process called fractional distillation. Distillation is what some would call the formation of liquid air. It separates a substances in a mixture, by changing their physical state. For instance through this process the gas xenon would be transformed into a liquid and used for multiple purposes. The uses for xenon, like most of the noble gases, is in photography and lighting.

Xenon, because of its sate and structure had no known compounds and had no known reactants. However in 1962 a Canadian chemist, Neil Bartlett, found that a true xenon compound could be formed. He found the synthesis for xenon hexafluoroplatinate (XePtF6), through the use of a spectroscope. A spectroscope is an instrument used to see the spectrum of colors a certain element or compound emits. When electrons are excited or burned they emit a color or certain colors, like fingerprints of an element. Bartlett was able to identify this compound as something new due to the range of colors in its spectrum. Since the discovery of the xenon hexafluoroplatinate compound more compounds have been found. [William Ramsay wearing a four in hand]

Sir William Ramsey