Periodic table to welcome two new elements

Updated on: Monday, December 05, 2011

The periodic table, the biblical graph of chemical elements and a permanent resident of classroom walls, is all set to get bigger by two more boxes.

Livermorium and flerovium could soon occupy the 114 and 116 spots on the periodic table of the elements, according to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Three other new elements had just recently finished this process, filling in the 110, 111 and 112 spots.

The newly announced names will undergo a five-month public debate period before the official paperwork gets processed and they show up on the table, LiveScience reported.

All five of these elements are so large and unstable they can be made only in the lab, and they fall apart into other elements very quickly. Not much is known about these elements, since they aren't stable enough to do experiments on and are not found in nature. They are called "super heavy," or Transuranium, elements.

Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 have also been synthesised at Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, located in Dubna, Russia, but their creation hasn't been confirmed by the International Union yet. Once they have been confirmed, they will also have to go through the naming and public-commenting periods.

Both livermorium and flerovium were also synthesised at the same Russian lab, where Russian researchers were working with American researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Element 114, previously known as ununquadium, has been named flerovium (Fl), after the Russian institute's Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions founder, which similarly is named in honour of Georgiy Flerov, a Russian physicist whose work and writings to Joseph Stalin led to the development of the USSR's atomic bomb project.

Element 116, which was temporarily named ununhexium, got its name as livermorium (Lv), after the national labs and the city of Livermore, California. Livermorium was first observed in 2000, when the scientists created it by mashing together calcium and curium.

Periodic table to welcome two new elements

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