LNH20: Yet More Tasty Crunchy Ideas

[Martin Phipps]

On Feb 4, 3:36 pm, Andrew Perron <pwer... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Feb 2012 03:02:14 +0000 (UTC), Martin Phipps wrote:
> > Flerovium?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flerovium
>
> I was looking for elements in the same group as carbon (due to its many
> different molecular structures)

Oh, I see.  It's been a long time since I ever studied any solid state
physics.  (Actually, I was never interested in the subject all that
much but I had to read up on it for my first research job.)  Google
google google... oh yes I see so there is such a thing as lattices
with carbon, silicon, germanium, tin and lead... although maybe not
all five of them at the same time... so all you would be doing is
adding flerovium and giving it the name awesomenium.   Fair enough.

There's a problem though: five isotopes of flerovium have been created
and the half life varies from 0.48s - 5.5s for 287Uuq a and b to 0.8s
for 288Uuq and 2.6s - 66s for 289Uuq a and b.  That means that if you
have any flerovium then half of it is gone in less than a minute.
Granted, it doesn't disappear altogether: it becomes copernicium which
then becomes darmstadtium which then becomes hassium which then
becomes seaborgium which then becomes rutherfordium which then becomes
either nobelium or lawrencium which then becomes fermium or
mendelevium etc etc etc giving off a LOT of radiation in the process.
Eventually you would get plutonium whose critical mass is only a third
of uranium-235 and has claimed the lives of Los Alamos scientists in
1945, 1946 and 1958.

I personally wouldn't want to handle the stuff. :)

Martin