Einsteinium- Know the Element Named after Albert Einstein

A team of scientists at the Berkeley Lab has reported some of the properties of element 99 in the periodic table called “Einsteinium”, named after Albert Einstein. Einsteinium is an actinide element, according to Lenntech, and is found on the bottom row of the periodic table.

Einsteinium is a synthetic element with the symbol Es and atomic number 99. Einsteinium is a member of the actinide series and it is the seventh transuranic element. It was named by the famous scientist Albert Einstein

Einsteinium was discovered in 1952.

Its discovery was not revealed for at least three years.

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Einsteinium Named after Albert Einstein- Over View

It was suggested  in the Physical Review in 1955 that the element be named after Einstein.

HISTORY

Einsteinium was discovered in the debris of the first thermonuclear explosion which took place on a Pacific atoll, on 1 November 1952. Fall-out material, gathered from a neighbouring atoll, was sent to Berkeley, California, for analysis. There it was examined by Gregory Chopin, Stanley Thompson, Albert Ghiorso, and Bernard Harvey. Within a month they had discovered and identified 200 atoms of a new element, einsteinium, but it was not revealed until 1955.

The einsteinium had formed when some uranium atoms had captured several neutrons and gone through a series of capture and decay steps resulting in einsteinium-253, which has a half-life of 20.5 days.

By 1961, enough einsteinium had been collected to be visible to the naked eye, and weighed, although it amounted to mere 10 millionths of a gram.

Uses of Einsteinium

• The Main Use Of Einsteinium Is To Create Heavier Elements, Including Mendelevium. No Other Uses Have Been Reported So Far.
• A radioactive metal, only a few milligrams of which are made each year.
• Einsteinium has no uses outside research.
• Einsteinium has no known biological role. It is toxic due to its radioactivity.

As per the Chemical World podcast, “in part, the tiny quantities of Einsteinium that have been made reflect the difficulty of producing it. But it also receives the sad accolade of having no known uses. There really isn’t any reason for making einsteinium, except as a waypoint on the route to producing something else. It’s an element without a role in life.” This means that Einsteinium has found no such use in the medical or chemical industry so far. This is due to the small amount of the element present in the world.

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Properties of the element

• Einsteinium has a half-life of 20 days.
• Because of its high radioactivity and short half-life of all einsteinium isotopes, even if the element was present on Earth during its formation, it has most certainly decayed.
• This is the reason that it cannot be found in nature and needs to be manufactured using very precise and intense processes.
• Therefore, the element has been produced in very small quantities and its usage is limited except for the purposes of scientific research.
• The element is also not visible to the naked eye and after it was discovered, it took over nine years to manufacture enough of it so that it could be seen with the naked eye.

• It was discovered in 1952 in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb (the detonation of a thermonuclear device called “Ivy Mike” in the Pacific Ocean).

Discovery of Einsteinium

When Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, as part of a test at a remote island location called Elugelab on the Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific, it produced an explosion that was about 500 times more destructive than the explosion that occurred at Nagasaki. Subsequently, the fallout material from this explosion was sent to Berkeley in California for analysis, which was examined by Gregory Choppin, Stanley Thompson, Albert Ghiorso, and Bernard Harvey, who within a month had discovered and identified over 200 atoms of the new element.

According to a podcast run by Chemistry World, the discovery of the element was not revealed for at least three years and it was first suggested that the element be named after Einstein in the Physical Review in 1955.

Because of its high radioactivity and short half-life of all einsteinium isotopes, even if the element was present on Earth during its formation, it has most certainly decayed. This is the reason that it cannot be found in nature and needs to be manufactured using very precise and intense processes.

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