Newer Elements - Goodbye Unununium! Quiz

Answer: roentgenium

Roentgenium, with atomic number 111, has only been created in a laboratory, and is very unstable. Its most stable isotope has a half life of less than two minutes. It was synthesized at Darmstadt in 1994 by a team led by Sigurd Hofmann. It is named after Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays.

Answer: meitnerium

Meitnerium, atomic number 109, was synthesized in 1982 by a team at Darmstadt led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Munzenberg. It is extremely volatile, and therefore difficult to test if its properties are in line with predictions. It is named for Lise Meitner, and was the first element to be named after a woman on her own (curium had been named after both Marie and Pierre Curie). Lise Meitner was one of the leading physicists of her day, instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission.

She would probably have won a Nobel prize, if she wasn't a Jewish woman whose scientific career was largely based in Berlin from where she had to flee the Nazis.

Answer: dubnium

Dubnium, with atomic number 105, has been through several names. Its independent discoverers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory proposed calling it nielsbohrium and hahnium respectively, before the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry decided it should be called dubnium after the town of Dubna. Around 120 km from Moscow, Dubna is the home of JINR, which was founded in 1956 and has been massively important in advancing the fields of chemistry and physics.

Answer: seaborgium

The element with atomic number 106, seaborgium, is only found in laboratories. Its most stable isotope has a half life of less than a quarter of an hour. The element was definitively synthesized in California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1974.

It was named after one of the Berkeley team, Glenn Seaborg, who became the first living person to be so honored. Glenn Seaborg (1912-1999), who worked on the discovery and investigation of ten new elements, and contributed to the concept of actinides, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951.

Answer: tennessine

Tennessine has atomic number 117. Its discovery was announced in 2010 after a joint effort by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The element was synthesized by bombarding berkelium with calcium nuclei.

The name tennessine was chosen in recognition of the location of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University in the state of Tennessee.

Answer: oganesson

Oganesson was synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, when bombarding californium atoms with calcium ions yielded a handful of atoms with atomic number 118. The name oganesson was chosen to honor Yuri Oganessian, who became the second living person to have an element named after themselves. Oganessian was the leading researcher into the very heavy synthetic elements.

His cold fusion and, later, hot fusion methods led to the discovery of a dozen new elements.

Answer: rutherfordium

The most stable isotope of element number 104, rutherfordium, has a half life of less than an a hour and a half. The element was first tentatively detected at the JINR in 1964, Definitive production was proved five years later at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, from bombarding californium with carbon ions.

It was named after Ernest Rutherford, the pioneer in nuclear physics from New Zealand, whose many achievements included proposing an atomic model with a very small atomic nucleus.

Answer: nihonium

Nihonium, which has atomic number 113, is highly radioactive, with a half life of around 10 seconds for its most stable isotope. The credit for its discovery was hotly disputed and only decided after a lengthy process, by a joint working party from the Institute of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the Institute of Pure and Applied Physics.

They determined that the discovery had been made in 2004 by a team from the Japanese institute, Riken, led by Kosuke Morita. The element was named nihonium after the country of Japan.

Answer: bohrium

Bohrium was discovered at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1981. They bombarded bismuth with chromium nuclei and produced five atoms of the new element with atomic number 107. It was given the name bohrium to honor the Danish quantum theory pioneer, Niels Bohr.

Answer: copernicium

Copernicium has atomic number 112. Its discovery at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, came from bombarding lead with zinc nuclei. It belongs to the same group of elements as zinc and cadmium, but its chemical reactions are closer to what would be expected of a noble gas.

Its name recognises the great astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, who proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system in the early sixteenth century.