Hassium facts for kids

Hassium is a chemical element. It has been named unniloctium and eka-osmium. It has the symbol Hs. It has the atomic number 108. It is a transuranium element.

Hassium is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature. It has to be made.

Hassium oxidises like osmium, the element above it in the periodic table. Hassium oxidises to hassium tetroxide. It is less volatile than osmium tetroxide.

History

Hassium was first made in 1984. It was made at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany. The team that made darmstadtium was led by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg.

The element was named from the Latin name for the German state of Hessen. Hessen is the state that the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung is in.

Before it was named Hassium scientists could not decide what the name should be. There was an element naming controversy. The temporary IUPAC systematic element name was unniloctium. The symbol with the name was Uno. In 1994 a committee of IUPAC recommended that element 108 be named hahnium. The name hassium was adopted internationally in 1997.

Hassium-270

Isotope 270 of Hassium was found in December 2006. An international team of scientists led by the Technical University of Munich found it. It is a doubly magic isotope. It has an long half-life of 22 seconds. Scientists had thought that heavy and stable isotopes should exist. Some theories said Hassium-270 may be part of an island of stability.

Images for kids

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  GSI's linear particle accelerator UNILAC, where hassium was discovered and where its chemistry was first observed

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  Hessentag festival in 2011, celebrating the culture of the German state of Hesse, after which hassium is named

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  Molybdenite

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  Energy levels of outermost orbitals of hassium and osmium atoms in electronvolts, with and without taking relativistic effects into account. Note the lack of spin–orbit splitting (and thus the lack of distinction between d3/2 and d5/2 orbitals) in nonrelativistic calculations.

See also

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