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Jai Ganesh

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Registered: 2005-06-28

Posts: 52,223

Bohrium

Bohrium

Gist

Bohrium is a synthetic element, meaning it is not a naturally-occurring element. Several isotopes of Bohrium have been discovered, the most stable of which is bohrium-270, with a half-life of just 61 seconds.

Bohrium is an artificially produced radioactive element. It is probably silvery or metallic gray. It's most stable isotope, Bh-262 has an half life of 17 seconds.

Summary

Bohrium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Bh and atomic number 107. It is named after Danish physicist Niels Bohr. As a synthetic element, it can be created in particle accelerators but is not found in nature. All known isotopes of bohrium are highly radioactive; the most stable known isotope is 270Bh with a half-life of approximately 2.4 minutes, though the unconfirmed 278Bh may have a longer half-life of about 11.5 minutes.

In the periodic table, it is a d-block transactinide element. It is a member of the 7th period and belongs to the group 7 elements as the fifth member of the 6d series of transition metals. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that bohrium behaves as the heavier homologue to rhenium in group 7. The chemical properties of bohrium are characterized only partly, but they compare well with the chemistry of the other group 7 elements.

Details

Bohrium (Bh) is a synthetic element in Group VIIb of the periodic table. It is thought to be chemically similar to the rare metal rhenium.

In 1976 Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced that they had synthesized element 107, later given the official name bohrium, by bombarding a target of bismuth-209 with ions of chromium-54. The resultant collisions were reported to have produced an isotope of the element with a mass number of 261 and a half-life of 1–2 milliseconds. The existence of the element was confirmed by West German physicists at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung [GSI]) in Darmstadt.

Additional Information:

Appearance

Bohrium is a highly radioactive metal.

Uses

At present, bohrium is of research interest only.

Biological role

Bohrium has no known biological role.

Natural abundance

Bohrium does not occur naturally and only a few atoms have ever been made. It will probably never be isolated in observable quantities. It was created by the so-called ‘cold fusion’ method. This involved the bombardment of bismuth with atoms of chromium.

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