Nihonium

Nihonium (ニホニウム) is a chemical element. It is also named eka-thallium. It has the symbol Nh. It has the atomic number 113. It is a transuranium element. The name “nihonium” comes from the name of Japan in Japanese, 日本 (nihon).

Nihonium does not exist in nature, and can only be made artificially. It is made from the alpha decay of moscovium.

There are no known uses for nihonium. What nihonium looks like is not known because not enough has been made to see it with human eyesight. Based on trends in the Periodic Table it could be a soft, silver colored, very reactive metal like sodium.

History

On February 1, 2004, Nihonium and moscovium were discovered. A team of Russian scientists at Dubna from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and American scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory first reported the chemical elements.

On September 28, 2004, a team of Japanese scientists said that they had made the element. , ,

In May 2006, in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research made nihonium using a different method. They found the identity of the last products of the radioactive decay of the nihonium they made.

Name

Ununtrium was a temporary IUPAC systematic element name meaning “one-one-three” in Latin. Scientists from Japan suggested the name japonium (symbol Jp) or rikenium (Rk). However, they picked Nihonium because not only is it discovered in Japan, but it means Japan, too, as Nihon is Japan or Japanese in Japanese.