PERIODIC TABLE HAS NEW NAMES FOR FOUR ELEMENTS

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the gatekeeper to the periodic table, has announced the
proposed names for elements 113, 115, 117 and 118: nihonium, moscovium, tennessine and oganesson.
The new names for the four superheavy, radioactive elements will replace the seventh rows uninspired
placeholders of ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium.
IUPAC officially recognized the elements in December and gave naming rights to teams of scientists from the
United States, Russia and Japan, who made the discoveries.
The proposed names had to follow IUPAC rules and are now available for public review. People have until
November 8 to object to the proposals, and IUPAC has the final say.
Nihonium, symbol Nh, was discovered by scientists at the Riken institute in Japan. They are the first from Asia
to earn the right to propose an addition to the table.
Celebrating Japan
The name comes from Nihon, which is one of the two Japanese words for Japan. The other word, Nippon,
made its way to versions of the periodic table in 1908 as element 43, nipponium, but was never officially
accepted.
At the time, researchers were unable to replicate the experiments of Masataka Ogawa, a Japanese chemist who
isolated the element. Two decades later, it was revealed that Mr. Masataka had in fact found a new element:
element 75, by then already known as rhenium.
The team that discovered element 113 told IUPAC that they had chosen nihonium in part to honour the work of
Mr. Masataka. We expect if kids know there is an element that a Japanese group discovered, the number who
get interested in science will increase, Kosuke Morita, who headed the research group that discovered the
element, said.
A trio of research institutions the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), in Russia; Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, in Tennessee; and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California were given the right to
propose names for elements 115 and 117.
Moscovium, symbol Mc, is named for Moscow, which is near the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.
Tennessine, symbol Ts, gets its name from the state of Tennessee, where Oak Ridge National Laboratory is. After
californium, it is the second element named for one of the 50 states.
Naming rights for element 118 belonged to the same Russian researchers and the Americans from the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory.
They selected Oganesson, symbol Og, for Yuri Oganessian, who helped discover several superheavy elements.
If accepted, it will be only the second time that an element is named for a living person. The first was element
106, seaborgium, named for Glenn T. Seaborg.
These new elements were discovered using the hot fusion approach, developed and implemented by
Oganessian at JINR.
The names may disappoint some people, like the 150,000 heavy-metal music fans who signed a petition to get
element 115 named lemmium after Lemmy Kilmister of the band Motorhead.

DAV CENTENARY PUBLIC SCHOOL, PASCHIM ENCLAVE, NEW DELHI-110087

Page 1