Scientists made a new thing.
It is a tiny part of matter. It has a special name. It is named for Tennessee. This new thing is very new. Do you like science?
Scientists made a new thing.
It is a tiny part of matter. It has a special name. It is named for Tennessee.
This new thing is very new. It was found in 2010. A big team of people worked together. They used a special machine to find it.
To make it, they hit one thing with another. They used a tiny bit of blue liquid. This helped them build the new part.
It does not last a long time. It only stays for a tiny moment. It is very hard to make.
Scientists are still learning about it. They want to see how it works. It is a very big discovery.
Tennessine is a man-made element. It has the symbol Ts. It also has the number 117. This number tells us how many protons are in its nucleus.
Scientists named it after the state of Tennessee. This is because research centers there helped find it.
Making tennessine is a very hard task. It requires a special way to build atoms. Scientists hit a target with a beam of particles. They used a target made of berkelium.
They also used a beam of calcium. This process joins the parts together to make a new atom.
This new element does not last long. It only stays for tiny moments. Scientists think it might sit near an "island of stability." This is a place where some heavy elements last longer. Tennessine is expected to be a metal. It might also be volatile, which means it can turn into a gas easily. A team from Russia and the United States found it. They shared their news in 2010.
Tennessine is a man-made element with the symbol Ts. It has the atomic number 117. This number means it has 117 protons in its center. It is a very heavy element. It has the joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements.
It is also the second-highest atomic number on the periodic table. Scientists think it might sit near an "island of stability." This is a special place where some huge elements stay stable. Most heavy elements break apart very quickly. However, this island might help them last longer.
Making this element is a very hard job. Scientists use a method called fusion to build it. They start with a target made of berkelium.
They then hit that target with a beam of calcium. This beam uses calcium-48, which has 20 protons and 28 neutrons. The extra neutrons help make the new atoms heavier. This makes them closer to that island of stability. The process is very delicate. The atoms created only last for tens or hundreds of milliseconds. This means they exist for only a tiny blink of an eye.
A large team of scientists worked together to find it. A group from Russia and the United States led the work. They worked with many other places too. These included Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. They also worked with Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
One scientist, Clarice Phelps, was part of the Oak Ridge team. She was the first African-American woman involved in finding a new element. This was a very big moment for science. The discovery was first announced in April 2010. It happened in a place called Dubna, Russia.
The history of this discovery involved many steps. In 2004, researchers proposed the experiment. They had to wait for berkelium to be made. It was very expensive to produce. It cost about 3.5 million dollars to start the work. In 2008, the Oak Ridge reactor began making berkelium again. They made 22 milligrams of it. This was enough for the experiment. The target had to be flown to Russia very fast. It traveled across the ocean five times because of paperwork issues. It finally arrived in Russia in June 2009.
Tennessine is part of a group called the halogens. This is Group 17 on the periodic table. It might act differently than lighter halogens. This is because of things called relativistic effects. Scientists expect it to be a volatile metal. This means it might turn into a gas easily. It is also expected to follow certain trends for melting and boiling points. Even though it is man-made, it helps us learn about the world. It shows us how the smallest parts of matter work together. We are still learning more about these tiny, fast-moving atoms.
Tennessine is a synthetic element with the chemical symbol Ts. It holds the atomic number 117. This number represents the 117 protons found in its nucleus. It is an extremely heavy element. In fact, it shares the joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements. Tennessine is also the penultimate element of the 7th period on the periodic table.
Because it is man-made, it does not occur naturally in the environment. Scientists study it to understand how matter behaves at the extreme edge of the periodic table.
Creating tennessine requires a complex process called nuclear fusion. Scientists aim to fuse two lighter nuclei to create a much heavier one. To do this, they use a target made of berkelium, which has 97 protons. They then bombard this target with a beam of calcium-48 nuclei. Calcium-48 is a specific isotope with 20 protons and 28 neutrons. This high neutron-to-proton ratio of 1.4 is very important. The extra neutrons help the resulting nuclei become heavier. This makes the new atoms closer to a theoretical region called the "island of stability."
In this island, some superheavy elements might be more stable than others.
In the periodic table, tennessine is expected to be a member of group 17. This group is known as the halogens. These include familiar elements like fluorine and chlorine. However, tennessine may behave quite differently from its lighter relatives. This is due to relativistic effects, which are changes caused by the high speeds of electrons. Because of these effects, tennessine is expected to be a volatile metal. It may not form anions or achieve high oxidation states like other halogens. Still, some properties like melting and boiling points should follow general periodic trends.
The discovery of tennessine was a massive international effort. A Russian–American collaboration led the research. Key institutions included the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. They also worked with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. Other partners included Vanderbilt University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Clarice Phelps was a member of the ORNL team. Her involvement is notable because she was the first African-American woman involved in discovering a new element.
The discovery was officially announced in Dubna in April 2010.
The path to discovery was long and expensive. In 2004, researchers proposed the experiment to synthesize element 117. However, they first had to acquire berkelium. At that time, ORNL had stopped producing it. Re-starting production would have cost about 3.5 million dollars. The team had to wait for a commercial order of californium to extract berkelium as a by-product. In 2008, ORNL resumed production. They produced 22 milligrams of berkelium, which was enough for the experiment. This material had a half-life of only 330 days. This means half of the substance would decay every 330 days.
Moving the material was a logistical challenge. The berkelium target had to be transported from the United States to Russia quickly. The experiment had to be completed within six months of its departure. The target was packed into five lead containers for the flight. Interestingly, the target traveled across the Atlantic Ocean five times. This happened because Russian customs officials twice refused entry due to paperwork issues. The material finally arrived in Russia in June 2009. It was then placed on a titanium film in Dimitrovgrad. By July 2009, it was installed in the particle accelerator at JINR.
Once the experiment began, the results were tiny and fleeting. The synthesized tennessine atoms lasted only tens or hundreds of milliseconds. Scientists detected the element by watching its decay chains. One isotope underwent six alpha decays before spontaneous fission. Another isotope underwent three alpha decays before fission.
In 2011, scientists created a daughter isotope directly. This helped confirm the original results. The discovery was officially recognized by the IUPAC and IUPAP in December 2015. The name tennessine was officially adopted in November 2016. This name honors the region of Tennessee where the research took place.
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