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It's Elemental

The Element Darmstadtium

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Darmstadtium

110 Ds Darmstadtium 281

Atomic Number: 110

Atomic Weight: 281

Melting Point: Unknown

Boiling Point: Unknown

Density: Unknown

Phase at Room Temperature: Expected to be a Solid

Element Classification: Metal

Period Number: 7

Group Number: 10

Group Name: none

Special Notes: Radioactive and Artificially Produced

What's in a name? Named for the city of Darmstadt, Germany.

Say what? Darmstadtium is pronounced as darm-STADT-ee-em.

History and Uses:

Darmstadtium was first produced by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenber and their team working at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany on November 9th, 1994. They bombarded atoms of lead with ions of nickel with a device known as a linear accelerator. This produced one atom of darmstadtium-269, an isotope with a half-life of about 0.17 milliseconds (0.00017 seconds), after at least a billion billion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) nickel ions were fired at the lead target over the course of a week.

Darmstadtium's most stable isotope, darmstadtium-281, has a half-life of about 20 seconds. About 15% of the time, it decays into hassium-277 through alpha decay. The remaining 85% of the time, it decays through spontaneous fission.

Since only a few atoms of darmstadtium have ever been produced, it currently has no uses outside of basic scientific research.

Estimated Crustal Abundance: Not Applicable

Estimated Oceanic Abundance: Not Applicable

Number of Stable Isotopes: 0 (View all isotope data)

Ionization Energy: Unknown

Oxidation States: Unknown

Electron Shell Configuration:

1s2

(Unconfirmed)

2s2   2p6

3s2   3p6   3d10

4s2   4p6   4d10   4f14

5s2   5p6   5d10   5f14

6s2   6p6   6d9

7s1

Citation and linking information

For questions about this page, please contact Carol McKisson.