Word: krypton
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...knew it as "Idlewild," the name of a golf course that it displaced. The 4,900-acre airport (on Long Island, 38 minutes' drive from Manhattan's Airlines Terminal) covers an area as large as Manhattan Island from 42nd Street to the Battery; its 35 all-weather krypton flash approach lights (3,300,000,000 peak beam candlepower) are the brightest ever made by man. Idlewild's ten miles of paved runways (six strips completed, one under construction) will be able eventually to handle upwards of 60 aircraft landings and take-offs an hour...
...match, the paper particles first heated set others on fire; these in turn ignite others, and so on. The same sort of chain reaction must be started for a successful large-scale atomic explosion. Above, the rare form of uranium, U-235, is shown breaking down into barium and krypton (only one of several possible disintegrations). The "match" is a neutron source at left. (Radium mixed with beryllium is a common source of neutrons...
...uranium nucleus splits into barium and krypton atoms, which are highly excited, unstable and artificially radioactive. They throw off gamma and beta radiation, and finally, in an effort to lose mass, they spout neutrons. If these neutrons are slowed by such substances as graphite, paraffin, heavy water or ordinary water, they will touch off other uranium nuclei. In a tiny fraction of a second the reaction will run through a good-sized sample of uranium, containing trillions of atoms, and the result will be a cataclysmic blast...
Scarcely more than a year ago Superman was just a comic-strip nobody from an obscure planet called Krypton. Now, as almost every kid in the U. S. (and many a grownup) well knows, Superman is THE man to have around in a 1940 pinch. He can outswim a torpedo, outfly an airplane, outdistance a streamliner train, outrun a speeding automobile, punch his way through armor plate. Also he can get down to brass tacks as Clark Kent, reporter, write superscoops for his paper...