New Elements on the Periodic Table

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Periodic Table, the new elements are on the bottom.

Kristen Brockmiller, Staff Writer

New elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118 were recently discovered in Japan, the United States, and Russia. These new elements have finished the 7th period of the periodic table of elements.

The first element (element 113) was created in Asia in the Riken Institute. This was the first element to be created in Asia. Element 115, and 117 were discovered in United States by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research created the final element (element 118) in Russia.

Unfortunately, when being created in the institutes, the elements didn’t last very long, meaning that extensive research couldn’t be extracted. The information that was taken from the elements were that they are consisted of super heavy material so the elements are categorized in the heavy section.

Although the elements are categorized the elements only have temporary names, and will receive permanent ones shortly. When picking a name of an element there are certain guidelines. It can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, or a scientist.

Before a name is made the element has to be created first. Some people might be wondering how these new elements were made. Atomic number 115 was created by shooting a beam of calcium into americium, which created the new element for a short period of time. Mrs. Erikson a science teacher said, “…scientists were in the process of trying to explore new opinions by trying to bombard other heavy metal elements with beams of ions so that they could try to create new elements.”

Most people believe in creating elements because as Adam Sheren a chemistry student said, “It is extremely important because things like this don’t happen often, and it’s our world and it is important to know what we can know about the world.”