CAMOTES HILLSIDE ACADEMY INC.

Western Poblacion, Poro, Cebu

LECTURE NOTES

Subject : Physical Science

Teacher : Ms. Hannah Grace G. Mabulay
Date :

THE ATOMIC NUMBER AND THE SYNTHESIS OF NEW ELEMENTS

Topic

SHAZNY LEDESMA, ANGELINE OAING, ASHLEY CHARITY CASTRO

Reporter

Henry Moseley and the Atomic Number

In the early 1900s, various atomic theories came about one by one, detesting Dalton’s Hard-
sphere model. One of the earliest was:

 J.J. Thomson’s plum pudding model with his discovery of the electrons.
 Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus and the protons and disproved
Thomson’s model with his gold foil experiment.
 Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was trying to figure out the periodic table and
arrange the elements in increasing atomic mass.
 Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley discovered that the periodic table of elements
should be arranged based on its atomic number.

Atomic number, Z, is the number of protons in an atom. It is identical to the charge

Number of the nucleus. It uniquely identifies a chemical element.

The symbol Z came from the German word “Zahl” which means number.
It indicates the atomic number of The element in the periodic table.

1913, Moseley published a paper on the arrangement of the elements in the periodic table based
on their atomic numbers.

Elements are arranged according to their atomic numbers, there are four gaps in the table. These
gaps corresponded to the atomic numbers 43, 61, 85, and 87.

The technique he used in identifying Elements by shooting electrons and looking at x-ray spectra
is now called X-ray Spectroscopy.

Synthesis of New Elements

Nuclear transmutation reaction is a reaction involving the transformation of one Element or

isotope into another element.

Particle accelerator – is used to synthesize new elements.

-is a device that is used to speed up particles (e.g. protons, neutrons, alpha
Particles).

Ernest Lawrence – American physicist invented the cyclotron, which was a compact particle
accelerator that accelerates particles in a spiral path.
 CAMOTES HILLSIDE ACADEMY INC.
Western Poblacion, Poro, Cebu

In 1937, Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè discovered the element with atomic number 43 from
the radioactive parts of Lawrence’s cyclotron.
 The newly synthesized element was named Technetium (Tc) after the Greek
word technêtos meaning “artificial.” Tc was the first man-made element.

In 1940, Dale Corson, Kenneth Mackenzie, and Emilio Segrè discovered the element with the
atomic number 85.

A cyclotron is a particle accelerator that uses alternating electric Fields to accelerate particles
that move in a spiral path in the presence of a magnetic field.

Element-85 was named astatine from the Greek word astatos meaning unstable

The two other elements discovered through studies in radioactivity.

 Element-61 (promethium) was discovered as a decay product of the fission uranium.
 Element-87 (francium) was discovered as a breakdown product of actinium.

Edwin McMillan and Philip Abelson proved that an element having an atomic number 93
could be created.

Glenn Seaborg, Edwin McMillan,Joseph Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl bombarded uranium
with deuterons (particles composed of a proton and a neutron) in a cyclotron. Element-94 was
synthesized and named plutonium.

transuranium elements is an element with atomic numbers greater than 92 (the atomic number
of uranium).