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Darmstadtium is named after the city Darmstadt, Germany. |
Darmstadtium
| Atomic Number: | 110 | Atomic Radius: | empirical: 132 pm (predicted)[2][4] |
| Atomic Symbol: | Ds | Melting Point: | -- |
| Atomic Weight: | 281 | Boiling Point: | -- |
| Electron Configuration: | [Rn]7s25f146d8 (predicted)[2] | Oxidation States: | 8, 6, 4, 2, 0 (predicted)[2][4] |
History
November 9, 1994 at 4:39 pm, the first atom with atomic number 110 was detected at the Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, in Germany.
Element 110 was produced by fusing a nickel and lead atom together. This was achieved by accelerating the nickel atoms to a high energy in the heavy ion accelerator."This rare reaction occurs only at a very specific velocity of the nickel projectile. Over a period of many days, many billion billion nickel atoms must be shot at a lead target in order to produce and identify a single atom of element 110. The atoms produced in the nickel-lead collisions are selected by a velocity filter and then captured in a detector system which measures their decay. The energy of the emitted helium nuclei serves to identify the atom" (Press Release). This element was only found to have a lifetime of less than 1/1000th of a second. It is expected that soon a heavier version of element 110 that might be more stable, and that lives slightly longer will be developed.
The name darmstatdium was confirmed by IUPAC in August 2003.