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n—1970
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n Younknow how a person who makes a scientific discovery gets to name it?
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nWell,nit doesn’t always work out that way!
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nAlbertnGhiorso at the Lawrence Laboratories of the University of California,nBerkeley, discovered atomic element 105 (which means that it has 105nprotons). The discovery was announced on this day in 1970, andnGhiorso and the other American physicists named it hahnium afternGerman scientist Otto Hahn.
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nButnit turned out that Russian scientists had made some of this heavynelement, too, in Russia. Apparently they had named the elementnnielsbohrium after the Danish scientist Niels Bohr!
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nInguess it’s kind of nice that Americans were promoting a German andnRussians were promoting a Dane—they weren’t just trying to promotentheir own country’s reputation. What isn’t so nice is that somenscientists were writing papers about hahnium, and others were writingnpapers about nielsbohrium, and that was pretty confusing.
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nTheninternational organization that rules on disputes of this kindndecided to give element 105 the name unnilpentium as a temporarynname, and eventually (in 1997) gave the element a completelyndifferent name: dubnium, after the town of Dubna, Russia, where thenRussians had first produced it. The international organizationnpointed out that Lawrence Laboratories had already been recognized innseveral different element names (lawrencium, berkelium, californium,namericium), and that Dubna had not been so recognized in the past.
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Sonthat’s great—but think about this poor element! It’s had so manyndifferent names:
Sonthat’s great—but think about this poor element! It’s had so manyndifferent names:n
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nHahniumn(Ha)
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nNielsbohriumn(Ns)
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nUnnilpentiumn(Unp)
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nDubniumn(Db)
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nBynthe way, dubnium doesn’t exist in nature, and even when people createnit, it disappears fairly quickly because it is radioactive, with anshort 28-hour half life.
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nDonyou know the Element Song?
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TomnLehrer wrote a song with the names of all the elements—but peoplenhave created some new ones since he wrote it. Watch at the end of the video as several elements, including dubnium (Db) pop up on thenperiodic table of the elements. If you want them, here are thenlyrics.
TomnLehrer wrote a song with the names of all the elements—but peoplenhave created some new ones since he wrote it. Watch at the end of the video as several elements, including dubnium (Db) pop up on thenperiodic table of the elements. If you want them, here are thenlyrics.n
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Oh, and here is Harry Potter singing the element song. (Okay, you got me, it’s really Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played Harry Potter!)
Oh, and here is Harry Potter singing the element song. (Okay, you got me, it’s really Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played Harry Potter!)n
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nAlsonon this date:
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nFreedom Day in South Africa
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nCivil rights activist Coretta Scott King’s birthday
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nAnniversary of Beethoven’s composition of Fur Elise
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