Periodic table gets heftier with 3 new elements
The new 'Super Heavy' elements are very unstable, and can only be created in a laboratory.
By Jennifer Welsh, LiveScienceMon, Nov 07 2011 at 9:18 AM EST
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Photo: ZUMA Press
The periodic table of elements just got heftier, as the names of three new elements were approved on Nov. 4 by the General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
Elements 110, 111 and 112 have been named darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn).
These elements are so large and unstable they can be made only in the lab, and they fall apart into other elements very quickly. Not much is known about these elements, since they aren't stable enough to do experiments on and are not found in nature. They are called "Super Heavy," or Transuranium, elements.
The group approved these name suggestions proposed by the Joint Working Party on the Discovery of Elements, which is a joint body of IUPAP and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
World revolves around Copernicium
Temporarily called ununbium, copernicium, the new element 112, was named for Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), who first suggested that the Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, and starting the "Copernican Revolution." In a statement released in July 2009, Sigurd Hofmann, head of the discovery team at GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany, said they named the element after Copernicus "to honor an outstanding scientist, who changed our view of the world."
Hofmann and his colleagues first created a single atom of this extremely radioactive element on Feb. 9, 1996, by smashing together zinc and lead. Since then, a total of about 75 atoms of copernicium have been created and detected. It wasn't until 10 years after the discovery and multiple repeat experiments that the working group recognized element 112.
Roentgenium, after a modern physicist
Element number 111, officially renamed roentgenium by the General Assembly, was originally discovered in 1994 when a team at GSI created three atoms of the element, about a month after their discovery of darmstadtium, on Dec. 8. The working party needed a repeat performance to officially name the element, so the team repeated its experiment in 2002 and made three more atoms.
Roentgenium was named after German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845 – 1923), ridding itself of its temporary name unununium, Roentgen was the first to produce and detect X-rays, on Nov. 8 1895. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1901 for the work. [Nobel Prize in Physics: 1901-Present]
Darmstadtium mighty number 110
Darmstadtium, the new element 110, which took the temporary name ununnilium, was first synthesized on Nov. 9, 1994, at the GSI facility near the city of Darmstadt. It was discovered by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg, under Hofmann's direction. It was created by crashing a heavy isotope of lead with nickel-62, which created four atoms of darmstadtium. The experiment was repeated with nickel-64, creating nine more atoms.
Robert Kirby-Harris, chief executive at the Institute of Physics and secretary-general of IUPAP, said, "The naming of these elements has been agreed in consultation with physicists around the world and we're delighted to see them now being introduced to the Periodic Table."
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Comments
Starbuck
11/08/2011 10:08 AM
Thanks for risking the "dumb" question, Mark, and thanks the person whose name disappeared after I clicked "like" for the quick refresher!
Mark
11/07/2011 11:17 AM
Wait, I thought "Elements" were the simplest form of a substance. I didn't think there were "Compounds" on the PToE. So, what does "...they can be made only in the lab, and they fall apart into other elements very quickly...." mean? That the heavy elements are actually compounds of other elements? I know, I'm dumb.
JB
11/07/2011 11:34 AM
The elements they are creating aren't molecules. The lighter elements collided at incredibly high speeds in order to get their nuclei to impact and fuse and create the heavier elements.
The atoms they are creating in these experiments are very unstable and decay into the lighter elements as nuclear material is expelled via radiation. In naturally occurring elements this happens as well.
If you are familiar with the term "half life" it refers to how long it takes for half of.... More
