Elemental Puzzle

[akruppa]

Does it have something to do with the good samaritans?

Alex

[davar55]

My intended solution was revealed in posts #9 and #11 --
all five elements are either the same as or based on
the names of planets --
Yes, Krypton as Superman's home world was intended as a bit of levity.

I think you added a few that are based on
other astronomical bodies (He)
or other etymologies (Te), a reasonable extension.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by davar55

My intended solution was revealed in posts #9 and #11 --
all five elements are either the same as or based on
the names of planets --
Yes, Krypton as Superman's home world was intended as a bit of levity.

I think you added a few that are based on
other astronomical bodies (He)
or other etymologies (Te), a reasonable extension.

Tellus (along with Terra and Gaia) is a recognized name for the earth --- itself a planet --- and gives rise to a number of other words which are related to "earth-like", some examples of which I gave earlier. That is why I claimed you omitted it

This site http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tellus.html provides supporting evidence for my claim, as does the Wikipedia entry which reads:

Tellurium (Latin tellus meaning "earth") was discovered in 1782 by the Hungarian Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein (Müller Ferenc) in Transylvania. In 1798 it was named by Martin Heinrich Klaproth who earlier isolated it.

In old terminology, the Sun "Helios" and the Moon "Selene" were also rated as planets ("wanderers" in ancient Greek) which is why I suggested that a case could be made for including them. Ceres, of course, is a minor planet. All three are very dubious examples of the modern meaning of "planet", so I was prepared to accept their absence from your list.

Kr was actually the odd one out. All the others were named after planets, it gave rise to the name of a (fictional) planet.

Now, what is special about Sm?

Paul

[xilman]

Originally Posted by akruppa

Does it have something to do with the good samaritans?

Alex

Nope.

Paul

[davar55]

So, now that we've made a few revolutions around the sun,
why is Sm the only one without a stable isoptope?
Is it because Krypton had a red sun?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by xilman

about why Sm is special because it is the only one with a stable isotope.

I must have missed some context -- "the only one" of which? If you meant the only one of all elements, then we're looking for some pun, apparently.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarium:

The samarskite mineral was named after Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets, the Chief of Staff (Colonel) of the Russian Corps of Mining Engineers in 1845–1861. The name of the element is derived from the name of the mineral, and thus traces back to the name Samarsky-Bykhovets. In this sense samarium was the first chemical element to be named after a living person.

[S485122]

I think you have provided the response : could it be that Sm is the only element named after a person with a stable isotope.

Jacob

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by S485122

I think you have provided the response : could it be that Sm is the only element named after a

living

person with a stable isotope.

Jacob

(The set of persons with only unstable isotopes being null, presumably )

From http://careerchem.com/NAMED/Elements-Names.pdf

Gadolinium was named for Johan Gadolin

From Wikipedia:

Gadolinium - stable isotopes 154-158 and 160, but ...

It is expected that continuous improvement of experimental sensitivity will allow discovery of very mild radioactivity (instability) of some isotopes that are considered stable today. For example, it wasn't until 2003 that bismuth-209 was shown to be radioactive [2]. Many "stable" nuclides are possibly "meta-stable" in as much as they may be calculated to have an energy release [3] upon several possible kinds of radioactive decays.

Gd-154 and Gd-155 might alpha-decay, and Gd-160 might double-beta-decay.

- - - -

Johan Gadolin (d. 1852)

Gadolin became famous when he discovered the first rare earth element. In 1792 Gadolin received a sample of black, heavy mineral found in a quarry in the Swedish village Ytterby near Stockholm. By careful experiments, he isolated a rare earth oxide which was later named yttria. He also isolated in the same study yttrium trihydroxide. Yttria, or yttrium oxide, was the first known rare earth metal compound — at that time, it was regarded as an element. The work was published in 1794.


The mineral that Gadolin examined was named gadolinite in 1800. The oxide of the element gadolinium, gadolinia, was named after Gadolin by its discoverers.

So, was the element named before Johan died?

In 1880, Swiss chemist Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac observed spectroscopic lines due to gadolinium in samples of didymium and gadolinite; French chemist Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran separated gadolinia, the oxide of Gadolinium, from Mosander's yttria in 1886. The element itself was isolated only recently. Gadolinium, like the mineral gadolinite, is named after Finnish chemist and geologist Johan Gadolin.

Apparently not, though its containing mineral gadolinite was.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

living.

Is the correct answer.

Very few elements have been named after living people. AFAIK, Seaborg was the next person so honoured.


Paul

[davar55]

Does that answer explain why Sm wasn't in the original list?

Doesn't Fermium have a stable isotope?
And didn't Albert Einstein (I think you may have heard of him)
have a stable isotope?

Can you create the complimentary list to the original puzzle,
i.e. to Hg, Kr, Np, Pu, and U?

[xilman]

Originally Posted by davar55

Does that answer explain why Sm wasn't in the original list?

Doesn't Fermium have a stable isotope?
And didn't Albert Einstein (I think you may have heard of him)
have a stable isotope?

Can you create the complimentary list to the original puzzle,
i.e. to Hg, Kr, Np, Pu, and U?

My question was about elements named after living people and nothing to do with stability per se.

Fermi, I believe, was dead by the time Fm was named. Similarly Curie, Einstein, Nobel and a whole bunch of others (including Gadolin).

AFAIK, of those named after people (lawrencium is named after the lab, itself named after Lawrence) only Sm and Gd have stable isotopes

Of course, I may be wrong because I'm relying on memory and not Google.


Paul