Einsteinium and Copernicium, Research Paper Example

It would appear that most of the names assigned to the Periodic Table of the Elements (116 and counting) depends on the discoverer of the element, on experiments conducted on other elements that resulted in the discovery of a new element, and where the element was first discovered. For example, Americium (#95) was “discovered in 1944 by the American scientists Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, Leon O. Morgan and Albert Ghiorso” who created this element by “bombarding plutonium-239 (an isotope of plutonium) with high energy neutrons;” holmium (# 67) which was “discovered by Per Theodor Cleve, a Swedish chemist, in 1879” who utilized three other elements during experiments to search for “impurities in the oxides of other rare earth elements;” and cobalt (# 27), “discovered by Georg Brandt, a Swedish chemist, in 1739” who attempted to “prove that the ability of certain minerals to color glass blue was due to an unknown element” (Gagnon, 2014).

Two of the most recognized elements named after a famous person are Einsteinium (# 99), and Copernicium (# 112). The first of these elements is officially known as Einsteinium-253 which was first identified in 1952 by research scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory, and the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. This element was appropriately named after Albert Einstein who formulated the mathematical theories related to the hydrogen bomb. Historically, Einsteinium was first detected after the initial explosion of the hydrogen bomb in October of 1952 which coincidentally was under the control of the Los Alamos lab (Stewart, 2012).

At first, this element was difficult to collect, due to the fact that it was created as a result of nuclear fission and was so similar to uranium-238. Some ten years later, scientists at Los Alamos managed to produce Einsteinium in the laboratory; later on in the 1970’s, Einsteinium was isolated as a pure type of metal and joined the list of known elements on the periodic chart (Stewart, 2012). Fortunately, Albert Einstein (1879 to 1955) lived long enough to see his name attached to this new element which helped to support some of his theories regarding the nuclear fission process and the radioactivity that accompanies the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. Since this element is not found in the natural environment, meaning that it cannot be removed from the earth like others metals, it is mostly used by research scientists. Interestingly, much like Americium, Einsteinium-253 was later used to create another element known as mendelevium (Stewart, 2012).

The second element is known as Copernicium which was first prepared in 1996 by research scientists from Germany, Russia, and Finland. In July of 2009, this element was officially named after Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 to 1543) who first came to realize that the earth was not the center of the universe which led to the concept of a heliocentric solar system or one in which the Sun serves as the center with the nine planets in orbit around it. One important reason for choosing Copernicus for this element was because Sigurd Hofmann, the team leader who helped to discover this element, wished to “salute an influential scientist who had not received any accolades in his own lifetime” (Copernicium, 2014) as a renowned astronomer. At first, this element was to be named after Galileo, but because Copernicus was so ignored during his lifetime, the research team decided to honor Copernicus with this new element (Copernicium, 2014).

References

Copernicium. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/element.php?sym=Cn

Gagnon, S. (2014). The periodic table of elements. Retrieved from http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/index_sym.html

Stewart, D. (2012). Einsteinium element facts. Retrieved from http://www.chemicool. com/elements/einsteinium.html