Oganesson
Fast facts
- Atomic number
- 118
Oganesson is a synthetic chemical element with symbol Og and atomic number 118. Oganesson has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass of all known elements to date. The radioactive oganesson atom is very unstable, and since 2005, only five (possibly six) atoms of the isotope Oganesson-294 have been created.
History
The element Oganesson is named in honour of Yuri Oganessian. It was first created in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. In December 2015, it was recognised as one of four new elements by the Joint Working Party of the international scientific community at IUPAC and IUPAP. It was formally named on 28 November 2016. It had a previous name given by the IUPAC called “Ununoctium”, meaning “one-one-eight” in Latin. This was a placeholder name until the element was discovered and a name was given, similar to many other unnamed elements at the time that were above Element 118. The possibility of a seventh noble gas, after helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon, was considered almost as soon as the noble gas group was discovered. Danish chemist Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen predicted in April 1895, the year after the discovery of argon, that there was a whole group of chemically unreactive gases similar to argon that would link the halogen and alkali metal groups. He expected that the seventh of this series would end a 32-element period which contained elements like thorium and uranium and had an atomic weight of 292, close to the 294 now known for the first and only confirmed isotope of oganesson.
Chemistry
The chemistry of Oganesson cannot be found because of how radioactive it is and how short its half-life is, which is only 0.69 milliseconds. However, predictions can be made based on properties that the group has in common with each other. Since it’s a noble gas, it is predicted that it will be a diatomic molecule (because it only pairs with itself).
Uses
It currently has no uses due to how radioactive and how short its half-life is because of its radioactive decay. It is only used purely for scientific reasons at the moment.
Written for younger readers
Oganesson, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: The Elements
NOTOC
Oganesson doesn’t exist in nature on Earth. Three atoms have been made so far by scientists in a laboratory. This isn’t enough to see with the naked eye or even an optical microscope so we don’t know what it looks like. What they do know is that it is very dangerous and radioactive, and that it is probably a gas at room temperature.
Oganesson was discovered in 2006 by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, when they fused together Californium and Calcium, creating an element with an atomic number of 118 and an atomic weight of 294. Because it is so difficult to create Oganesson, the researchers had to shoot 25 million million million Calcium atoms at the Californium target before it was produced.
The element was named after Dr. Yuri Oganessian, who is a Russian researcher at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, who has been at the facility for over fifty years. He lead the team that helped discover Flerovium, as well as the team that discovered Oganesson, so it was named after him.
He is one of only two people to have an element named after him while he was still alive, the other being Seaborgium, element number 106, after Glenn Seaborg.
Did You Know?
- Oganesson is so unstable that due to radioactive decay half of it will have changed into a different element in less than 1 / 1000 of a second.
- Oganesson is sometimes called Ekaradon, because it is below radon in the periodic table.
Oganesson doesn’t occur naturally. If it did, it would be extremely radioactive and so quickly decay almost as soon as it was produced. Instead, it can only be found in laboratories.
Because Oganesson is so radioactive and extremely difficult to produce, it has no practical uses. The only use it can have is for scientists to research it and improve their theories about atoms and elements.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Oganesson” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.