Last December, the periodic table become just a little bit crowded. Based on reports, four new elements—with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118—earned their spots on the periodic table. They were temporarily named ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium until the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry revealed their “unofficial” names in June.
Periodic Table's New Element, Officially Added By The Scientists
The periodic table is getting a little bigger after scientists added the names of four new elements. It completes the seventh row of the chart. The options could have included mythological characters or minerals, but the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry settled on names based on the locations where elements were discovered or researchers who helped find them.
The elements are named as Tennessine (Tennessee), Nihonium (Japan), Moscovium (Moscow) and Oganesson (honored to scientist Yuri Oganessian). “The names of the new elements reflect the realities of our present time,” said Natalia Tarasova, president of the scientific group, listing places from three continents and the pivotal role of researchers such as Oganessian.
According to Latin Post, these four elements cannot be found naturally. With having a lot of protons in the nucleus, these materials are considered superheavy & highly unstable. They exist only for a fraction of second in the laboratory. The most stable element among these four is Nihonium, which has a half-life of only 20 seconds in its most stable isotope.
The Four New Elements
As per Khou, here are the four elements and the reason behind their given official names.
- 113 Nihonium (Nh), named by the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Japan. Nihon means Japan or literally “the Land of Rising Sun,” in Japanese. The element is the first discovered in and named after an Asian country.
- 115 Moscovium (Mc), chosen to honor the Russian region and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, where experiments were conducted.
- 117 Tennessine (Ts), which recognized the state for contributions from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University and University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
- 118 Oganesson (Og), which honored Yuri Oganessian for pioneering research on super-heavy elements.
“Overall, it was a real pleasure to realize that so many people are interested in the naming of the new elements, including high-school students, making essays about possible names and telling how proud they were to have been able to participate in the discussions,” said Jan Reedijk, president of the group’s Inorganic Chemistry Division. “For now, we can all cherish our periodic table completed down to the seventh row.”
