—1970
Well,
it doesn't always work out that way!
Albert
Ghiorso at the Lawrence Laboratories of the University of California,
Berkeley, discovered atomic element 105 (which means that it has 105
protons). The discovery was announced on this day in 1970, and
Ghiorso and the other American physicists named it hahnium after
German scientist Otto Hahn.
But
it turned out that Russian scientists had made some of this heavy
element, too, in Russia. Apparently they had named the element
nielsbohrium after the Danish scientist Niels Bohr!
I
guess it's kind of nice that Americans were promoting a German and
Russians were promoting a Dane—they weren't just trying to promote
their own country's reputation. What isn't so nice is that some
scientists were writing papers about hahnium, and others were writing
papers about nielsbohrium, and that was pretty confusing.
The
international organization that rules on disputes of this kind
decided to give element 105 the name unnilpentium as a temporary
name, and eventually (in 1997) gave the element a completely
different name: dubnium, after the town of Dubna, Russia, where the
Russians had first produced it. The international organization
pointed out that Lawrence Laboratories had already been recognized in
several different element names (lawrencium, berkelium, californium,
americium), and that Dubna had not been so recognized in the past.
So
that's great—but think about this poor element! It's had so many
different names:
Hahnium
(Ha)
Nielsbohrium
(Ns)
Unnilpentium
(Unp)
Dubnium
(Db)
By
the way, dubnium doesn't exist in nature, and even when people create
it, it disappears fairly quickly because it is radioactive, with a
short 28-hour half life.
Do
you know the Element Song?
Tom
Lehrer wrote a song with the names of all the elements—but people
have created some new ones since he wrote it. Watch at the end of the video as several elements, including dubnium (Db) pop up on the
periodic table of the elements. If you want them, here are the
lyrics.
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!)
Also
on this date:
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