Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • So now's the time to put in your bid for the name for Element 117.

  • I think it would be really good to name an element after Richard Feinman so you could have the element fine.

  • Mainly, um, with the elements symbol.

  • I think F way would be quite nice.

  • I'm particularly excited about Element 117.

  • You might ask why, but 117 was the only element in the periodic table when we started this project where nobody had even seen one atom.

  • It's never bean observed, and then form a tall So the fields wild, wide open.

  • And I thought that it would be quite impossible to make a video when we were making videos about each element about element.

  • When nobody's even seen one atom, this arrangement just seems to fall to bits before it can properly form.

  • Then, about three years ago, our first video wasn't very good.

  • There was exciting result from Russia from Dubina, where they synthesized the first atoms of element 117.

  • No, no, it's really exciting because it's it's It's the generation of new matter, you know, it's almost like a Children's will be spying It's like, Wow, something new, something really exciting.

  • So those of you who have watched videos for a long time will know that if you want to synthesize a new element and have your experiments accepted, you have to wait till somebody.

  • Els has repeated the experiments, done it a different way and got the same result.

  • Otherwise, anybody could say, Oh, I've seen an atom of elements So And so in fact, there has been the case with Element 118 where somebody did cheat on the first results, were wrong and were faked.

  • I've explained several times, and you may have seen some of the videos how you make these elements.

  • You take a sample of a really quite heavy element on the heavier, the better, and then bombard it with atoms of a lighter element, which you accelerate really fast after days.

  • Perhaps they stick together and you make a big atom.

  • In the case of Element 117 U two's elements, where the atomic numbers, when you add them together, add up to 117.

  • In this case, they used an Element 97 Kill Liam on DDE calcium, which is element number 2020 plus 97 makes 117 and the atoms of calcium were accelerated in a huge accelerator in Germany.

  • At the G s, I in dumb start to a speed that's about 1/10 of speed of light and banged into the sample of Vicky Liam and created a few atoms.

  • Now the technical problem is that Bucky Liam itself is a highly radioactive, an unstable element.

  • And in a very productive demonstration of international collaboration, the Ba Ki liam was made in America in the Oak Ridge National Lab and then 13 milligrams.

  • That's a tiny bit just almost too small to see.

  • Just a few grains were transported to Germany.

  • In order to do this, you can't just have a lump of Bucky Liam.

  • You have to have one particular isotope single mass of Vicky Liam.

  • They had killed him 249 on dhe.

  • This sample was transported to Germany and it's radioactive.

  • It has 1/2 life of 330 days, so it means every 330 days, half of it decays away.

  • So not only is it radioactive, but you'll have to work quite quickly or your valuable sample is gone before you get round to doing the experiment.

  • So they did the experiment.

  • The Bucky Liam was made in the Oak Ridge National Lab, transported to Germany, and then it was bombarded with calcium atoms, and they looked for the signals for the decay of Element 117.

  • And they sold signals corresponding to the sorts of decay's that are here on my tie from earlier radioactive elements they've made on.

  • The way these elements decay is that they give off alfa particles these air nuclear of helium atoms and the mass changes in steps of four.

  • So the mass goes down by four units, and it transforms one element into another.

  • And in fact, they discovered some quite interesting isotopes of other elements that were formed, which had never been observed before during this decay.

  • If Kelly miss such a pain in the backside on, they have to get this tiny sample which decays away.

  • Why don't they use different elements, what they use 50 and 67?

  • I think the reason that they use thes pretty light atoms is that if they get used bigger and bigger atoms full the collision, there's a likelihood that everything will smash up because the smaller elements are inherently stronger and they don't fragment when they hit the target.

  • And so I think if you used 57 6 day, you just end up with a fantastic mess of fragments going everywhere.

  • You might make the old atom of 117 but it would be lost in the noise of everything else.

  • So the next stage is the two committee, a joint committee of the International Union Up Urinal Applied Chemistry and the corresponding one of physics has to decide whether the evidence is really good enough.

  • If everybody is happy, then there's the exciting thing.

  • They choose the name for the element, the people who get the honor of those that discovered the element.

  • Originally, I'm not sure whether this will be counted as the Russians or the Germans, but I suspect that everybody will sit down together.

  • And there was a huge team working on the latest project.

  • I think more than 70 scientists from all sorts of different countries on DDE, So now I'm going to put in my bid.

  • I think it would be really good to name an element after Richard Feinman who was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project.

  • So he has connections with the Oak Ridge lab.

  • It where the Ba Killian was meant but is also a huge figure in modern nano technology and a founder of much of the research that is being done now So you could have the element fine.

  • Mainly, um, with the elements symbol.

  • I think F Way would be quite nice.

  • And that would also serve another purpose, because when you see Fineman's name written down, a lot of people are not sure whether you should pronounce it Fineman or Feynman.

  • But if the elements symbol is F Y, they will know it has to be pronounced five.

  • So my bid for this name is fine Minion, A group of Russians and Germans on the name after an American.

  • Who are they?

  • I think it's quite possible that they would, because after all, the Germans named Element 100 12 after Copernicus, who was Polish, and I think we have got to the stage now where elements are being named after figures or places that have a world role on dhe, nationalism is going away, and I certainly think that anybody who's read anything about Fineman could imagine that it was a typical citizen of any country.

  • He is about the most unconventional scientist.

  • That is what lived in the last 100 years and also one of the really influential ones as well.

  • Professor for the last year or two, I've heard you advocating the name.

  • Plant him.

  • We still haven't got planking him, have you?

  • Have you abandoned your love of the idea of playing?

  • Q.

  • I still like the name.

  • Plant him, but there's some other elements.

  • Still 115 113.

  • So there's still opportunities and, of course, 118 as well.

  • But 117 is an odd number, and it's good to name an odd element after an old scientist, I've already got the prize.

  • The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, kicking a discovery, the observation.

  • Other people use it.

  • Those are the real things.

  • The honor's unreal to me.

So now's the time to put in your bid for the name for Element 117.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it