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Rutherfordium ;
Rutherfordium is a synthetic element, with the symbol Rf, and atomic number 104. It was first synthesized in 1964 by a team of Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. Rutherfordium is a member of the actinide series of elements, and is located in the periodic table at the bottom of group 4, in the d-block. It is a heavy metal with a silvery-white color and a density of about 22 grams per cubic centimeter. Rutherfordium has a melting point of about 1150 degrees Celsius and a boiling point of about 2700 degrees Celsius. It is a radioactive element, with a half-life of about 2.8 hours. Rutherfordium is not found naturally on Earth, but it is thought to occur in the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Rutherfordium is unstable and decomposes in water to form rutherfordium oxide and hydrogen gas.
How was Rutherfordium Discovered?
Rutherfordium was discovered in the early 1960s by a team of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The team was led by physicist Glenn T. Seaborg, who had previously discovered the element plutonium.
To create rutherfordium, the scientists bombarded a target of curium-244 with alpha particles (high-energy helium atoms). This caused some of the curium atoms to break apart, creating a new element with the atomic number 104. The team named the element after physicist Ernest Rutherford, who had first proposed the existence of an atomic nucleus.
Properties of Rutherfordium
Rutherfordium is a synthetic element with the symbol Rf and atomic number 104. It is a radioactive metal that does not occur naturally on Earth. Rutherfordium was first synthesized in 1967 by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
Rutherfordium is a silver-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife. It is highly reactive and quickly corrodes in air. Rutherfordium is a poor conductor of heat and electricity. It is not poisonous but is radioactive and can cause radiation poisoning.
Experiments Behind the Discovery of Rutherfordium
Rutherfordium was first discovered in 1969 by a team of scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia. The team was led by Russian physicist Georgiy N. Nikolaevich Flerov.
The scientists were using a particle accelerator to smash atoms of plutonium-244 together. When they smashed the atoms together, they produced a new, heavier element that they named rutherfordium.
To verify that they had actually created rutherfordium, the scientists conducted a series of experiments. One of these experiments was to measure the rate at which rutherfordium decayed. They found that rutherfordium decayed very quickly, with a half-life of only about a second.
This quick decay meant that rutherfordium was very unstable and could not exist for very long. This was confirmed by another experiment, which showed that rutherfordium was not found in nature and had to be created in a laboratory.
