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Six Atoms of Element 117 Produced
mr crypto writes "A team of Russian and American scientists has produced six atoms of a new element, number 117, that has long stood as a missing link among the heaviest bits of atomic matter ever produced. The element, still nameless, appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict. The researchers say that the discovery bolsters the idea of an 'island of stability' among still heavier elements."
Study it for a minute. The chemical properties you speak of are largely represented by the columns. Super-heavy elements would be in the middle, in their own 'new' columns.
Wikipedia actually has an article about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extension_of_the_periodic_table_beyond_the_seventh_period
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Light elements, say, those you can find in first three rows of the periodic table, can be qualitatively described using hydrogen atom-like model. Basically, it says that properties of elements are periodic, when you go through the periodic table in a consecutive manner. But then you got heavier elements. The hydrogen atom-like approximation breaks down here, the properties are still periodic, but there are many exceptions from set of simple rules that were valid for lighter elements. In some cases even quantum-mechanical methods fail to describe heavier elements, for example gold wouldn't have gold color if not treated relativistically. One can expect that going towards extremely large Z well established techniques won't prove successful.
Because most of the interesting properties of an element are not defined by the number of protons but by the number of electrons and which orbitals they are found in in the ground state.
The orbitals are not simply layers like a layer cake and they don't fill up in a strictly one-two-three kind of order. The way the lanthanides stick up out of the periodic table is due to the fact that an outer orbital fills in before one of the inner ones does for those elements.
The fact that sodium behaves like potassium is not because of the number of protons for each, for example, it is because the number of electrons to balance those protons results in one electron in the outermost 's' orbital. The atom prefers to get rid of this electron, making the + ion. The inert elements are all due to the fact that they have the right number of electrons to completely fill the outer shell. Chlorine and the elements in that column lack completeness by one electron, so they prefer to pick up one electron and form the - ion.
H2 is stable because the two H atoms share the two electrons, making a complete outer shell. Na2 is not stable, because even though they'd share the outer electron and make a complete 's' orbital, the outer shell of Na has more than an s orbital.
It's all an electron thing, not proton.
More accurately, the classical velocity of the electrons, if you calculate it from Newtonian principles, approaches (or even exceeds) the speed of light. Nevertheless, the electron does not "move" when in a bound state, from a quantum perspective.
It's interesting that even when a less accurate physical theory is technically wrong, it may still have some predictive value.
Most of my questions are based on the apparent fact that for any given number of protons in the nucleus, there is exactly one element with that amount.
That's the definition of an element, yes.
If that were true, it would seem that given the number of protons, you would be able to deduce certain properties about the element (if there was only one possible configuration of electrons for a given number of protons).
There is one set of possible electron orbitals, yes, but the problem is that with large elements like this the number of orbitals is very large and their behavior is non-obvious. You can't just look at element 117 and say that oh, the outer-most shell (the one that matters most with regards to chemical behavior) is one electron short of being full in the non-ionized element, so it's going to behave like Florine. There's a lot more going on in this element.
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