Seaborgium

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What's in a name? Named after the scientist Glenn Seaborg.

Say what? Seaborgium is pronounced as see-BORG-ee-em.

History and Uses:

Seaborgium was first produced by a team of scientists led by Albert Ghiorso working at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, California, in 1974. They created seaborgium by bombarding atoms of californium-249 with ions of oxygen-18 using a machine called the Super-Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator. The collision produced atoms of seaborgium-263 and four free neutrons. Seaborgium-263 is an isotope of seaborgium with a half-life of about 1 second. Three months before the Berkeley group announced their discovery, a team of scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, claimed to have produced seaborgium. Their method involved bombarding atoms of lead-207 and lead-208 with ions of chromium-54 with a device called a cyclotron. They believed that they had produced atoms of seaborgium-259. The Berkeley group's work was confirmed in 1993 and they were credited with the discovery.

Seaborgium's most stable isotope, seaborgium-271, has a half-life of about 2.4 minutes. It decays into rutherfordium-267 through alpha decay or decays through spontaneous fission..

Since only a few atoms of seaborgium have ever been made, there are currently no uses for seaborgium outside of basic scientific research.

Estimated Crustal Abundance: Not Applicable

Estimated Oceanic Abundance: Not Applicable

Number of Stable Isotopes: 0   

Ionization Energy: Unknown

Oxidation States: Unknown