The two newest editions to the periodic table are Flerovium, and Livermorium, which were both first synthesized over ten years ago. Only now have these new elements been accepted by the IUPAC, which is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. As of June 2011, they will become the latest of a few new periodic elements to be officially added to the periodic table. Both of these elements are considered “Super heavy” elements and can only be created in labs, so experimentation with them is diifcult.
The first of these two new elements is Livermorium, atomic number Lv, and was named after the Lawrence Livermore laboratory. Scientists from the Flerov laboratory, including Georgiy N. Perov worked on this project along side with Ken Hulet, another brilliant scientist who lived from 1926 until 2010. Once completely approved and the name is confirmed by the IUPAC, Livermorium will occupy the 114 spot on the periodic table, in the lower right corner.
The second of these two newest elements is Flerovium, atomic number Fl, and was named after its place of creation, Flerov Laboratory. It was an even more fitting title for the element being that the the laboratory itself bares the name of the person who discovered the element in the first place. Georgiy N Flerov was the physicist responsible for the elements overall discovery, he lived from 1913 until 1990. When completely approved and the name is confirmed, Flerovium will occupy a location of the table in the lower right corner. As is the case with Livermorium, Flerovium is known as a Transuranium and both of these elements break down rather quickly into other, separate elements. However, they are also not found in nature and they are hard to conduct experiments upon.
The above mentioned elements are not the only new elements that will soon be added to the Periodic table however; 110,111, 112 will all soon be filled by new elements, darmstadtium (Ds) in the 110 spot, roentgenium (Rg) as element 111, and copernicium (Cn) as element 112. Element 112 is named after the astronomer Copernicus though its production currently can be traced to Sigurd Horman, who found that it could be produced by smashing together zinc and lead.
It often takes many years for a new element to be added to the periodic table. There is a great amount of research that goes into not only the synthesizing of a new element, but also the testing and retesting of the results. Not only does a sufficient amount of data have to be compiled, but there must be an overall consensus and agreement amongst the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
