Periodic Table Swells As Three New Elements Named

Anum Rasheed

Students often memorize names and sequence of elements in periodic table with the help of famous songs. Time for them to change songs as three new elements gets added by Scientists.

Three elements 110, 111 and 112 have been named darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn) by IUPAC General Assembly.

Dr Robert Kirby-Harris, Secretary-General of IUPAP, said: “The naming of these elements has been agreed in consultation with physicists around the world and we’re delighted to see them now being introduced to the Periodic Table.”

The elements are very large and unstable and can only be made in the lab. They  quickly break down into other elements.

Copernicium was named after Prussian astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who first suggested that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Roentgenium and darmstadtium were originally discovered in 1994 when a team at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany created three atoms of the element. Darmstadtium is named after the city of Darmstadt, where the GSI Helmholtz Centre is based. Roentgenium has been named after Nobel Prize winning German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who first produced and detected X-rays in 1895.