Word: curium
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Manhattan meeting of the American Chemical Society last week, two novel elements made radioactive bows. One was man-made curium, No. 96 in the periodic table and the heaviest element known. The creation of curium was announced in 1945 (TIME, Nov. 26, 1945). But the element was not "isolated" (purified chemically) until recently. The world's total supply, prepared by Drs. Isadore Perlman and L. B. Werner of the University of California, is barely big enough to be seen with the naked...
...Like all the four known artificial elements,† curium is unstable. Each millionth of a gram shoots out 70 billion alpha particles (helium nuclei) per minute, 3,000 times as many as the same amount of radium. This activity makes a solution of curium hydroxide glow strongly enough to take its own photograph. Its "half-life" (the period during which one half disintegrates) is only five months...
...Curium can be made by bombarding plutonium with alpha particles, or americium with neutrons. Now that it has been isolated, the scientists working under the Atomic Energy Commission (the only ones privileged to play around with plutonium and its relatives) can try to build up an Element...
...chemical element, No. 61 is not good for much; it is almost as unstable as curium. The longest-lasting of its two isotopes has a half-life of 3.7 years...
...this point, serious minds took charge again. Last fortnight, at the convention of the American Chemical Society in Atlantic City, Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, chief human begetter of the two elements, officially named Element 95 "americium" (after the two Americas) and Element 96 "curium" (after the two Curies...