Which is the most hardest element to produce ?
I mean from the elements that we know the hardest one in the sense of the longest time to produce one atom
was the element
113 because their heads about
three atoms in
550 something days. Yeah, and this is by far the lowest number
Hello everyone in this video
I am going to tell you about the most expensive metal on Earth - about Nihonium,
one gram of which would cost more than all the elements of the Earth sold on the intergalactic
market. If to be precise
The price is fifteen point seven sextillion dollars
As all other ultra heavy transuranium elements, nihonium is not found on the Earth.
In our universe it can only exist for a brief moment when a synthesis of all atoms heavier than iron takes place as a result of explosions of
Supernovas or in binary systems between neutron stars and black holes on earth.However,
As well as all elements heavier than plutonium is synthesized artificially
however, as atomic number and mass of the new element grow it gets harder on a nuclear fusion with it because
nuclear strong force holding protons and neutrons together
Weakens and as a result alone Coulomb's repelling force grows.
Discovery of the element 113 dates back to the 90s, when a team of research workers from the Helmholtz university
tried to synthesize this element in
1998 by bombarding
Bismuth - 209 with Zinc - 70 atoms accelerated to one tenth the speed of light.
These attempts, however, were not successful.
After the initial failure of the German scientists, their American colleagues along with Russian scientists from the town of Dubna picked up on the experiment.
This time they chose Americium - 243
as their target, which was bombarded by Calcium - 48 atoms, which has a so-called double magic number of protons and neutrons.
As a result of this nuclear fusion, they obtained an atom of element
115 after alpha decay, which they obtained an atom of element 113
to prove the existence of element 114 it had to be obtained in a pure form
Rather than as decay product of heavier element.
That is what Japanese scientists tried to do, repeating the 1998 experiment by
synthesizing element 113 from bismuth and zinc even though the resultant product of the reaction was extremely small.
Probability of obtaining a new element as a result of collision of zinc and bismuth atoms was 10-28% (ten to the negative 28 per cent), which is practically neglectable.
the Japanese scientists
However were remarkably patient to obtain just one atom of Nihonium
the Japanese had to wait 10 months all the while running
the accelerator and out its systems round the clock after that
in 2004 they confirmed that they obtained a new element.
The obtained isotope Nihonium - 278 had just a 1.4 millisecond long half-life.
The new element was detected by the byproducts of its decay.
There were four of them
and the last one was spontaneous fission of Dubnium.
Do not forget that one hour of running a particle accelerator costs 1000 euros,
that is why one atom of the element 113 cost about 7.5 million euros.
Michael Blok, a worker of the Helmholtz university, will explain why is it so hard to produce nihonium with an accelerator.
This is a matter of the nuclear reaction
it just happens that the nuclear reaction that you have to use for the production of this element has a very low probability of
Creating the compound system that you want. I mean, there's a lot of factors that go into
Whether this reaction has a certain probability to occur
I mean, it's a mix of the energy of the stability of the nucleus you create against pushing and
various parameters. Yeah, so I mean it's not easy to predict
But I mean some reactions are likely to be more effective than others
No matter how patient the Japanese scientists were, their experiment had to be repeated by other scientists in other accelerators.
However, in ten years no one managed to repeat the reaction of Zinc with Bismuth.Not in Berkeley, or in Dubna neither in Darmstadt.
the element 114 was created only as a result of decaying of elements
115 and 117
During that time the Japanese managed to create another atom of Nihonium using bismuth and zinc just in 450
days of irradiation of bismuth foil with a stream of zinc atoms.
No one has managed to repeat this experiment as well
Thus if to calculate 1 gram of Nihonium
costs about 45 octillion dollars.
Even if the entire Earth and Moon were sold the money obtained from the sale will not be enough to buy it
in the end of 2015 IUPAC recognized discoverer of the new element by the Japanese scientists in
2016 the element 114 was named Nihonium after the country of Japan,nihon
Which is one of the common Japanese names for Japan during the entire research with Japanese
Scientists have managed to create only three atoms of Nihonium - 278
that is why it is extremely tricky to run chemical or physical
Experiments with this element.
However, as it is common
in case of studying of new elements the scientists use
computer modeling which reveals that Nihonuim is supposed to be an inert metal
Similar to Palladium or Ruthenium its density should be 18 grams per square centimeter.
However, I think you understand that Nihonuim as well as also super-heavy elements is
impossible to obtain in large quantities because of strong radiation
that is why even if you had a piece of Nihonuim it would immediately
Evaporate because of self heating during the radiative decay
releasing dangerous irradiated radioactive isotopes
Scientists however have managed to run some chemical experiments with this expensive metal during the last five years (having obtained it as a daughter of element 115)
Alexander Yakushev a nuclear physicist and a worker at the Helmholtz university in Darmstadt is going to tell you about it.
We produce Nihonium as a daughter of element - 115
actually we radiate Americium - 243
target it with calcium - 48 ions and produce moscovium - 288 which has a half - life of about 37 ms and it decays rapidly inside our gas chamber
Nihonium has a half - life of about one second
so the principle life is enough to for chemistry if the Nihonium would be
as an
atmosphere of Nihonuim
obviously Nihonium is a more active because there's one unpaired electron and of course
Almost every collision to the wall. Can give us Nihonium in the wall. It's why the chemical nucleus is a much more
So there are 10 people died in accordion once we had a 20 days experiment but we detective no Nihonuim
events in our chemistry in the data
So now we will spend some time to optimize our system
and for the next year, we have one month for the second attempt and we hope it will be successful
as you can see
experiments with the most expensive metal on Earth
will continue to be carried out to reveal all the secrets of metal and make the way to the so called Island of stability
Maybe in future videos. I'll tell you about such a unusual island if you like this small documentary
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