rutherfordium
Sign in to saveRutherfordium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Rf and atomic number 104. It is named after physicist Ernest Rutherford. As a synthetic element, it is not found in nature and can only be made in a particle accelerator. It is radioactive; the most stable known isotope, 267Rf, has a half-life of about 48 minutes.
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Rutherfordium is a human-made element (symbol Rf, atomic number 104) named after physicist Ernest Rutherford that can only be created in a particle accelerator and doesn't exist naturally on Earth. Because it's radioactive and decays quickly—with its most stable form lasting only about 48 minutes—it has limited practical applications but serves as an important subject for scientific research into heavy elements.
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Article
16 sectionsContents
- Introduction
- History
- Discovery
- Naming controversy
- Isotopes
- Stability and half-lives
- Predicted properties
- Chemical
- Physical and atomic
- Experimental chemistry
- Gas phase
- Aqueous phase
- Notes
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
Rutherfordium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Rf and atomic number 104. It is named after physicist Ernest Rutherford. As a synthetic element, it is not found in nature and can only be made in a particle accelerator. It is radioactive; the most stable known isotope, 267Rf, has a half-life of about 48 minutes.
In the periodic table, it is a d-block element and the second of the fourth-row transition elements. It is in period 7 and is a group 4 element. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that rutherfordium behaves as the heavier homolog to hafnium in group 4. The chemical properties of rutherfordium are characterized only partly. They compare well with the other group 4 elements, even though some calculations had indicated that the element might show significantly different properties due to relativistic effects.