Fun in the Periodic Table

I never thought that there could be humour associated with the story behind any element in the periodic table. Until I read the story behind one of the rarest elements. So no matter how much you disliked chemistry at school, this is a story you should still know. And as a bonus, have fun reading about it.

The element with such a story is so rare that you would only find one ounce of it on the entire earth! Add to that, it is extremely radioactive (half-life of 8 hours; its nickname could well be “Now you see me, now you don’t.”).  I am sure you don’t have the first clue which element I am talking about, so I will spare you the embarrassment of trying to guess: it’s astatine (At).

Ok, if it’s that rare and that short lived, how do we even know it exists? Because the periodic table says so! Scientists knew of elements with atomic numbers 84 and 86, so they “knew” that there had to be one with atomic number 85! But since they couldn’t find it, they started trying to create it in the labs. And a team at the University of Berkeley did just that.

Now for the fun parts.

Why didn’t they name the new element after Berkeley, as was the convention of naming after the discoverer? Well, partly because Berkeley had already discovered several elements, so they felt didn’t care about one more. Among the Berkeley discoveries were Element 97 (berkelium) and Element 98 (Californium). Which led the The New Yorker to muse:
“... the university ... has lost forever the chance of immortalizing itself in the atomic tables with some such sequence as universitium (97), ofium (98), californium(99), berkelium(100).”

You thought that’s funny? Wait, it gets better.

A couple of Berkeley scientists responded to the article pointing out if they'd gone with “universitium” and “ofium”, they’d have risked handing two “free” elements to all other universities in the world to discover the next one and take all the glory! Imagine the horror, they said, if New York University discovered the next two and named them “newium” and “yorkium”, resulting in the periodic table having the NYU name in it?

Now who’d have thought that the history of chemistry could be interesting? Tell that to your kids the next time they complain about either!

Comments

  1. KumarJuly 15, 2013 at 10:18 AM

    Thank God these developments did not occur in India!

    If it had happened here, from region to region, from party to party, from language to language there will be dogfights as to which politician's or favorite's name should be assigned to the new element.

    Some politician who may not even be able to tell us the name of one single element, will wreck havoc for not considering his name for a big-numbered newly discovered element. Tamil fanatics will want a Tamil name so that elements would sing the Tamil glory. The Bengalis will want, if I am not mistaken, the name "tagorium" for an element. In the mean time, Mumbai will be held to ransom as to why "takraium" was left out, after Bal Takray (hope I spelled it right, else Maharashtra will be vandalized and I may burn). Since in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand regions many netas are criminals, it may be easier to arrive at a compromise by naming an innocent element as "criminalium". etc. etc.

    The good thing is that so far no politician has managed to ban humor, since often the humor is at the politicians' expense. I may survive for now.

    ReplyDelete

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