Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What is the atomic number of mercury?
A somewhat more complicated scheme is shown here: the decay of the nuclide Au which can be produced by irradiating natural gold in a nuclear reactor. Au decays via beta decay to one of two excited states or to the ground state of the mercury isotope Hg. In the figure, mercury is to the right of gold, since the atomic number of gold is 79, that of mercury is 80. The excited states decay after very short times (2.5 and 23 ps, resp.; 1 picosecond is a millionth of a millionth of a second) to the ground state.
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78.
Of the 94 naturally occurring elements, those with atomic numbers 1 through 82 each have at least one stable isotope (except for technetium, element 43 and promethium, element 61, which have no stable isotopes). Isotopes considered stable are those for which no radioactive decay has yet been observed. Elements with atomic numbers 83 through 94 are unstable to the point that radioactive decay of all isotopes can be detected. Some of these elements, notably bismuth (atomic number 83), thorium (atomic number 90), and uranium (atomic number 92), have one or more isotopes with half-lives long enough to survive as remnants of the explosive stellar nucleosynthesis that produced the heavy metals before the formation of our Solar System. At over 1.9 years, over a billion times longer than the current estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 (atomic number 83) has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any naturally occurring element, and is almost always considered on par with the 80 stable elements. The very heaviest elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with half-lives so short that they are not found in nature and must be synthesized.
Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, and is a rocky body like Earth. It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, with an equatorial radius of . Mercury is also smaller—albeit more massive—than the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, Ganymede and Titan. Mercury consists of approximately 70% metallic and 30% silicate material. Mercury's density is the second highest in the Solar System at 5.427 g/cm, only slightly less than Earth's density of 5.515 g/cm. If the effect of gravitational compression were to be factored out from both planets, the materials of which Mercury is made would be denser than those of Earth, with an uncompressed density of 5.3 g/cm versus Earth's 4.4 g/cm.
Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weakly radioactive because all isotopes of uranium are unstable, with half-lives varying between 159,200 years and 4.5 billion years. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for over 99%) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons). Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.
Silver is a chemical element with symbol Ag (from the Latin "", derived from the Proto-Indo-European "h₂erǵ": "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. The metal is found in the Earth's crust in the pure, free elemental form ("native silver"), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.
Platinum is a chemical element with symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name is derived from the Spanish term "platino", meaning "little silver".
A chemical element is a pure substance which is composed of a single type of atom, characterized by its particular number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms, known as the atomic number and represented by the symbol "Z". The mass number is the sum of the number of protons and neutrons in a nucleus. Although all the nuclei of all atoms belonging to one element will have the same atomic number, they may not necessarily have the same mass number; atoms of an element which have different mass numbers are known as isotopes. For example, all atoms with 6 protons in their nuclei are atoms of the chemical element carbon, but atoms of carbon may have mass numbers of 12 or 13.
Oganesson has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass of all known elements. The radioactive oganesson atom is very unstable, and since 2005, only five (possibly six) atoms of the nuclide Og have been detected. Although this allowed very little experimental characterization of its properties and possible compounds, theoretical calculations have resulted in many predictions, including some surprising ones. For example, although oganesson is a member of group 18 – the first synthetic element to be so – it may be significantly reactive, unlike all the other elements of that group (the noble gases). It was formerly thought to be a gas under normal conditions but is now predicted to be a solid due to relativistic effects. On the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block element and the last one of the 7th period.
Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired by her when she slew Pallas. Palladium, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium form a group of elements referred to as the platinum group metals (PGMs). These have similar chemical properties, but palladium has the lowest melting point and is the least dense of them.
The name "hassium" was proposed by Peter Armbruster and his colleagues, the officially recognised German discoverers, in September 1992. It is derived from the Latin name "Hassia" for the German state of Hesse where the institute is located. In 1994, IUPAC Commission on Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry recommended that element 108 be named "hahnium" (Hn) after the German physicist Otto Hahn so that elements named after Hahn and Lise Meitner (meitnerium) would be next to each other, honoring their joint discovery of nuclear fission. This was because they felt that Hesse did not merit an element being named after it. GSI protested saying that this contradicted the long-standing convention to give the discoverer the right to suggest a name; the American Chemical Society supported the GSI. IUPAC relented and the name "hassium" (Hs) was adopted internationally in 1997.
Ununennium, also known as eka-francium or simply element 119, is the hypothetical chemical element with symbol Uue and atomic number 119. "Ununennium" and "Uue" are the temporary systematic IUPAC name and symbol respectively, until a permanent name is decided upon. In the periodic table of the elements, it is expected to be an s-block element, an alkali metal, and the first element in the eighth period. It is the lightest element that has not yet been synthesized.
The actual mass of an atom at rest is often expressed using the unified atomic mass unit (u), also called dalton (Da). This unit is defined as a twelfth of the mass of a free neutral atom of carbon-12, which is approximately . Hydrogen-1 (the lightest isotope of hydrogen which is also the nuclide with the lowest mass) has an atomic weight of 1.007825 u. The value of this number is called the atomic mass. A given atom has an atomic mass approximately equal (within 1%) to its mass number times the atomic mass unit (for example the mass of a nitrogen-14 is roughly 14 u). However, this number will not be exactly an integer except in the case of carbon-12 (see below). The heaviest stable atom is lead-208, with a mass of .
Iridium is one of the nine least abundant stable elements in Earth's crust, having an average mass fraction of 0.001 ppm in crustal rock; platinum is 10 times more abundant, gold is 40 times more abundant, and silver and mercury are 80 times more abundant. Tellurium is about as abundant as iridium. In contrast to its low abundance in crustal rock, iridium is relatively common in meteorites, with concentrations of 0.5 ppm or more. The overall concentration of iridium on Earth is thought to be much higher than what is observed in crustal rocks, but because of the density and siderophilic ("iron-loving") character of iridium, it descended below the crust and into Earth's core when the planet was still molten.
The mercury-in-glass or mercury thermometer was invented by physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in Amsterdam (1714). It consists of a bulb containing mercury attached to a glass tube of narrow diameter; the volume of mercury in the tube is much less than the volume in the bulb. The volume of mercury changes slightly with temperature; the small change in volume drives the narrow mercury column a relatively long way up the tube. The space above the mercury may be filled with nitrogen gas or it may be at less than atmospheric pressure, a partial vacuum.
Hahn's death did not stop his public acclamation. Proposals were made at different times, first in 1971 by American chemists, that the newly synthesized element no. 105 should be named hahnium in Hahn's honor; in 1997 the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) named it dubnium, after the Russian research center in Dubna (see element naming controversy). Although element 108 was given the name hassium (after Hesse) by its officially recognized German discoverers in 1992, a 1994 IUPAC committee recommended that it be named hahnium (Hn), in spite of the long-standing convention to give the discoverer the right to suggest a name. This recommendation was not adopted, following protests from the German discoverers, and the name hassium (Hs) was adopted internationally in 1997.
Osmium is a chemical element with the symbol Os and atomic number 76. It is a hard, brittle, blue-gray or blue-black transition metal in the platinum family and is the densest naturally occurring element, with a density of (slightly greater than that of iridium and twice that of lead). It is found in nature as an alloy, mostly in platinum ores; its alloys with platinum, iridium, and other platinum group metals are employed in fountain pen tips, electrical contacts, and other applications where extreme durability and hardness are needed.
Elemental magnesium is a gray-white lightweight metal, two-thirds the density of aluminium. It tarnishes slightly when exposed to air, although, unlike the heavier alkaline earth metals, an oxygen-free environment is unnecessary for storage because magnesium is protected by a thin layer of oxide that is fairly impermeable and difficult to remove. Magnesium has the lowest melting () and the lowest boiling point of all the alkaline earth metals.
The discharge tube contains a low pressure of a rare gas such as argon and mercury vapor. The mercury atoms are provided by a drop of liquid mercury, or by a semi-solid amalgam of mercury and other metals such as bismuth, lead, or tin. Some of the liquid mercury or the mercury in the amalgam vaporizes to provide the mercury vapor. The electric field ionizes some of the mercury atoms to produce free electrons, and then accelerates those free electrons. When the free electrons collide with mercury atoms, some of those atoms absorb energy from the electrons and are “excited” to higher energy levels. After a short delay, the excited mercury atoms spontaneously relax to their original lower energy state and emit a UV photon with the excess energy. As in a conventional fluorescent tube, the UV photon diffuses through the gas to the inside of the outer bulb, and is absorbed by the phosphor coating that surface, transferring its energy to the phosphor. When the phosphor then relaxes to its original, lower energy state, it emits visible light. In this way the UV photon is down-converted to visible light by the phosphor coating on the inside of the tube. The glass walls of the lamp prevent the emission of the UV photons because ordinary glass blocks UV radiation at the 253.7 nm and shorter wavelengths.
Hassium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. Twelve different isotopes have been reported with atomic masses from 263 to 277 (with the exceptions of 272, 274, and 276), three of which, hassium-265, hassium-267, hassium-269, have known metastable states. Most of these decay predominantly through alpha decay, but some also undergo spontaneous fission.
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev published a periodic table of all known elements (he predicted several new elements to complete the table, and corrected some atomic weights). A few months later, Meyer published a revised and expanded version of his 1864 table independently, which was similar to that published by Mendeleev (Meyer had been sent a copy of Mendeleev's table earlier; Mendeleev had sent it to many well-known chemists of his day) and a paper showing graphically the periodicity of the elements as a function of atomic weight. Meyer, as well as other chemists, was doubtful about Mendeleev's periodic law, and he criticized Mendeleev for "changing existing elements' atomic weights, only regarding possibility of periodical law in its structure". However, Mendeleev's work received significant support, when the new elements were found as predicted and atomic weights accordingly.
The Hg–Hg bond length of 253 pm (Hg–Hg in the metal is 300 pm) and the Hg–Cl bond length in the linear HgCl unit is 243 pm. The overall coordination of each Hg atom is octahedral as, in addition to the two nearest neighbours, there are four other Cl atoms at 321 pm. Longer mercury polycations exist.
For example, mercury absorbs radiation at 1849 and 2537 angstroms, and the source is often high-intensity mercury lamps. It is a commonly used sensitizer. When mercury vapor is mixed with ethylene, and the compound is irradiated with a mercury lamp, this results in the photodecomposition of ethylene to acetylene. This occurs on absorption of light to yield excited state mercury atoms, which are able to transfer this energy to the ethylene molecules, and are in turn deactivated to their initial energy state.
The crystal structure of mercurous sulfate is made up of Hg dumbbells and SO anions as main building units. Hg dumbbell is surrounded by four Oxygen atoms with Hg₋O distance ranging from 2.23 to 2.93 Å, whereas Hg-Hg distance is approximately 2.500Å.
Studies have shown mercury(I) sulfate to have the mercury atoms arranged in doublets with a bond distance of 2.500Å. The metal atom doublets are oriented parallel to the an axis in a unit cell. Mercury doublets form part of infinite chain SO - Hg - Hg - SO - Hg - Hg - … The Hg - Hg - O bond angle is 165°±1 . The chain crosses the unit cell diagonally. The mercury sulfate structure is held together by weak Hg-O interactions. The SO does not act as a single anion, but rather coordinated to the mercury metal.
Mercury(I) hydride is an unstable gas and is the heaviest group 12 monohydride. The composition of mercury(I) hydride is 0.50% hydrogen and 99.50% mercury. In mercury(I) hydride, the formal oxidation states of hydrogen and mercury are −1 and +1, respectively, because of the electronegativity of mercury is lower than that of hydrogen. The stability of metal hydrides with the formula MH (M = Zn-Hg) increases as the atomic number of M increases.