2 New Elements Sit Down For Dinner @ the Periodic Table
Excerpt from “Two New Elements”
Thanks to Deanna Conners of EarthSky.org for this article
On May 31, 2012, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) approved the addition of flerovium and livermorium to the periodic table of elements.
The two new elements were discovered during collaborative research carried out by scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia. An official announcement describing the two new elements will be published in the July 2012 issue of the IUPAC journal, Pure and Applied Chemistry.
Flerovium (atomic symbol Fl) is an element with an atomic number of 114 and an atomic weight of 289. The new element was named after Georgiy N. Flerov (1913 – 1990), a renowned physicist who founded the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.
Livermorium (atomic symbol Lv) is an element with an atomic number of 116 and an atomic weight of 293. The new element was named in honor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, USA.
Image Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Flerovium and livermorium are both synthetic radioactive elements that do not occur naturally on Earth. The scientists were able to create and observe the elements in a laboratory by bombarding curium (96 protons) with calcium ions (20 protons). When curium was combined with calcium, livermorium (116 protons) was produced for a brief moment before it decayed into flerovium and other more stable elements.
