New inclusions to the periodic table

Have you heard about the new discoveries in the Science world this week? It’s quite something - Four new elements have been added to the periodic table!

None of them are stable – they are currently all fleeting. 

They fill the seventh row of the periodic table and are element -113 ( ununTRIum), 115 (ununPENTium), 117 (ununSEPTium) and 118 (ununOCTium) which is a good way to name (if not a bit UNimaginative).

New updated periodic table

I think it’s quite fascinating that the new elements discovered are called “unun…”. 

Why are they called that I pondered after seeing the new element names. That question lead me to  read the draft recommendation that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has prepared in Dec 2015 about how to name new chemical elements.

It turns out there is a whole naming culture that controls how new elements are named, IUPAC has the final say-so on the names.  The scientist, or group or scientists that make the landmark discovery can suggest a name for the new element, but IUPAC gets to approve or reject it, and once it’s been decided on it can’t be changed in all of eternity, even if someone else successfully challenges the discovery. Tough rule! Even with human babies you get the flexibility to change names, but not so in the cut throat chemistry world.

Before and during the naming process, which can take some time, the element can have a temporary or interim name using its atomic number, for example as in 'element 118', or by its provisional systematic name, 'ununoctium' . Bingo. That explains my question and why the new elements have the 'unun' prefix. 

It always feels good to go on a quest to answer a question and gain knowledge on the journey.

What is allowed for names? Well according to the IUPAC recommendations, elements can be named after mythical characters or concepts, minerals, geographical places, element properties  or scientists – and the scientist doesn’t need to be dead for this to occur. Phew. After all it would be a bit unfair if the scientist who found the element couldn’t name it after themselves unless they were dead, which would rule out any further possible discoveries by that scientist. Now that would be silly. In 1994 that’s exactly what IUPAC was pushing for when element 106 seaborgium  was being named, and it took strong objection by the American Chemical Society to get IUPAC to pull their heads in and accept the name.

Additionally,  the elements are expected to have certain suffixes: ‘ium’ for metals (groups 1-16), ‘ine’ for group 17, and ‘on’ for group 18.

The periodic table was published in 1869 and very little has been changed in the last 147 or so years.  With all the developments in science and technology it’s amazing that no others have been discovered in the last couple of decades – mobile phone technology has gone ahead by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years, so it’s surprising that the new periodic table developments have taken this long.

However it’s quite amazing the formation of new elements, no matter how fleeting they are.  It’s promising for the future because of potential stable heavy metal discoveries and what that could mean.