Rutherfordium

Radioactive and Artificially Produced Scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, first reported the production of rutherfordium in 1964. They bombarded atoms of plutonium-242 with ions of neon-22, forming what they believed to be atoms of rutherfordium-260 and four free neutrons. In 1969, a group of scientists working at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, now known as the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in Berkeley, California, attempted to confirm the Dubna group's discovery. Lacking the equipment needed to accelerate neon ions, the Berkeley group, led by Albert Ghiorso, bombarded atoms of californium-248 and californium-249 with ions of carbon-12 and carbon-13, producing atoms of rutherfordium-257, rutherfordium-258, rutherfordium-259 and rutherfordium-261. They were, however, unable to produce the same isotope as the Dubna group. Credit for the discovery of rutherfordium is still under debate. Rutherfordium's most stable isotope, rutherfordium-267, has a half-life of about 1.3 hours and decays through spontaneous fission. Due to the small amounts produced and its short half-life, there are currently no uses for rutherfordium outside of basic scientific research.
 * Name: Rutherfordium
 * Symbol: Rf
 * Atomic Weight: 104
 * Atomic Weight: [ 265 ]
 * Standard State: presumably a solid at 298 K
 * Group: 4
 * Group Name: (none)
 * Period: 7
 * Block: d-block
 * Color: unknown, but probably metallic and silvery white or grey in appearance
 * Classification: Metallic
 * Atomic Number:** 104
 * Melting Point:** Unknown
 * Boiling Point:** Unknown
 * Density:** Unknown
 * Phase at Room Temperature:** Solid
 * Element Classification:** Metal
 * Period Number:** 7 **Group Number:** 4 **Group Name:** none
 * What's in a name?** Named after the scientist Ernest Rutherford.
 * Say what?** Rutherfordium is pronounced as **ruth-er-FORD-ee-em**.
 * History and Uses:**
 * Estimated Crustal Abundance:** Not Applicable
 * Estimated Oceanic Abundance:** Not Applicable
 * Number of Stable Isotopes:** 0
 * Ionization Energy:** Unknown
 * Oxidation State:** +4

Brief description: rutherfordium is a synthetic element that is not present in the environment at all. It has no uses.

Isolation: only very small amounts of of element 104, rutherfordium, have ever been made. The first samples were made through nuclear reactions involving fusion of an isotope of plutonium, 242Pu, with one of neon, 22Ne. 22Ne + 242Pu → 260104Rf + 4 1n Isolation of an observable quantity of rutherfordium has never been achieved.

chemical element with symbol **Rf** and atomic number 104, named in honor of New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford. It is a synthetic element (an element that can be created in a laboratory but is not found in nature) and radioactive; the most stable known isotope, 267Rf, has a half-life of approximately 1.3 hours. In the periodic table of the elements, it is a d-block element and the first of the transactinide elements. It is a member of the 7th period and belongs to the group 4 element. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that rutherfordium behaves as the heavier homoloque to hafnium in group 4. The chemical properties of rutherfordium are characterized only partly. They compare well with the chemistry of the other group 4 elements, even though some calculations had indicated that the element might show significantly different properties due to relativistic effects. In the 1960s, small amounts of rutherfordium were produced in laboratories in the former Soviet Union and in California. The priority of the discovery and therefore the naming of the element was disputed between Soviet and American scientists, and it was not until 1997 that International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) established rutherfordium as the official name for the element.
 * Rutherfordium**