Hassium Facts
Hassium Facts
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Interesting Hassium Facts: |
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Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Munzenberg, and their colleagues discovered hassium in 1984, around the same time that they discovered bohrium. |
The element was named after Hesse, the German state. |
A Soviet scientist, Victor Cherdyntsev, was the first to claim in 1968 that he had discovered naturally occurring hassium in a sample of molybdenite. |
A Russian team was the first to attempt to synthesize hassium in 1978, but were unsuccessful. |
Five years later, the same team attempted to produce other isotopes of hassium again, and synthesized Hs-270, Hs-264, and Hs-263. |
A repeat of the experiment that first produced H-264 in 1983 was successful in 1984. |
The highly controversial Transfermium Wars, referring to the elements after fermium in which the IUPAC settled disputes over elements 104 through 108, led to the assigning of a placeholder in position 108 until hassium could be synthesized. |
The matter was not officially resolved until 1997. |
As a radioactive, synthetic element, hassium does not occur naturally on Earth. |
Hassium samples throughout its history have only included a handful of atoms. |
The first sample of hassium was synthesized through a nuclear reaction that fused an isotope of lead with an isotope of iron, Pb-208 and Fe-58. |
Hassium decays so quickly that researchers do not expect to ever see an observable amount of the element. |
The element belongs to the group 8 series and is a member of the transactinide elements. |
Despite not having observable samples, researchers theorize that it should behave much like the heavier elements in group 8, like osmium. |
Should a large quantity of hassium ever be present, scientists expect it to be a silvery-colored metal that reacts quite readily with oxygen in the air to create a highly volatile tetroxide. |
This chemical property theory is based on its position on the periodic table with respect to other elements in its groups. |
Due to the radioactive nature of hassium's isotopes and the rate of decay, no primordial hassium is thought to exist on Earth. |
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