|
Now imagine my glee had I been alive in 1945 and listening to the radio. I would have picked up one of the best tidbits ever. "Quiz Kids" was a live radio game show produced from 1940 to 1953 by NBC that featured children with high IQs, including future Nobelist James D. Watson. On Nov. 11, 1945, Glenn T. Seaborg appeared as a guest on "Quiz Kids." One of the children on the show, Richard Williams, asked Seaborg if any new elements, in addition to plutonium and neptunium, had been discovered at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago during the war. Since the discovery information had already been declassified for announcement at the forthcoming ACS national meeting on Nov. 16, Seaborg shared the news that two new elements with atomic numbers 95 and 96 had been discovered. It's not every day that you hear about new elements announced on a game show. Talk about a golden nugget of a tidbit. Seaborg then told Williams, "So now you'll have to tell your teachers to change the 92 elements in your schoolbook to 96 elements." Seaborg later recalled in his 1979 Priestley Medal address that many kids did, in fact, tell their teachers to change the number of elements. "Judging from some of the letters I received from such youngsters, they were not entirely successful in convincing their teachers," he said. Initially, Seaborg's group had difficulty chemically separating the two new elements from the rare-earth elements. One of the members of the group, Tom Morgan, dubbed the two elements "pandemonium" and "delirium." Morgan's nicknames encompass the frustration of the group during their attempts to demonstrate the chemical proof of the elements' existence. Element 95 made one more radio appearance before receiving its formal name. On Dec. 15, 1945, Seaborg was a guest on the radio program "Adventures in Science." The announcer of the program wanted to know if elements 95 and 96 had been named. Seaborg replied that "naming one of the fundamental substances of the universe is, of course, something that should be done only after careful thought." The announcer then suggested that listeners of the program might be interested in submitting name suggestions for the new elements. Listeners were advised to send a postcard to the program, and in return, they received a free issue of Chemistry magazine that included Seaborg's technical paper and revised periodic table. Seaborg later sent a response to "Adventures in Science" sharing the names that people had suggested. Since all of the planets' names had already been used, some listeners suggested other astronomical bodies such as "big dipperain" and "sunonium." Other listeners suggested "artifium," "artifician," "cyclo" (after the cyclotron), and "mechanicium," since element 95 had been created in a lab and did not occur naturally. Interestingly, one listener suggested element 95 be named "curium" and element 96 "einsteinium." Those suggested names were eventually applied to elements 96 and 99, respectively, so some good ideas did come from the radio solicitation.
And now for one last tidbit of information. Americium was introduced into many homes via the radio. Today, however, the radioactive element can physically be found in almost every home and saves countless lives every year. Have you figured out where it hides yet? No fair cheating with the information box on this page! How about your smoke detector? Small amounts of americium are used as ionization sources in smoke detectors. The americium emits With so many interesting tidbits of information, americium would make a great quiz show category. Should I ever actually end up on a quiz show, I'll certainly be hoping I get to say, "I'll take 'americium' for $200, please!"
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
-particles that ionize the surrounding air, increasing electrical conductivity. When smoke enters the ionization chamber, it disrupts the electrical conductivity and triggers the alarm.