Element of the week: einsteinium | video | @GrrlScientist

What do Ivy Mike, plutonium and Gabon, Africa share in common?This week, we meet the element einsteinium, which has the atomic symbol Es and the atomic number 99. The atomic symbol was originally E but was later changed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to conform to their new rule that all newly named elements must have symbols with two letters. The inspiration for this element's name should be obvious.Einsteinium is a soft silvery-white metal that is radioactive. The resulting radio-decay is accompanied by both heat and light (see right). It was first identified in the aftermath of the Ivy Mike nuclear weapons test by the United States that took place on the Pacific atoll, Enewetak, on 31 October 1952 (doi:10.1103/PhysRev.99.1048). This element has seventeen known isotopes. Einsteinium-252 is the longest lived of those isotopes with a half-life of just 472 days. Currently, it is synthesised in a nuclear reactor by bombarding plutonium-239 with neutrons. Einsteinium is not interesting to biologists because it is not essential to life -- in fact, it is beneficial for living things to avoid contact with this element whenever possible. Further, with the exception of using this element as a starting point for synthesising higher elements, einsteinium has no use at all. In this video, several of our favourite chemists tell us a little more about einsteinium:[Video link]The most interesting thing I share with you about einsteinium is that, despite it...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: theguardian.com Blogposts Chemistry Science Source Type: news