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Black woman helps discover chemical element [1]
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Date: 2023-06-13
They thought she was the night shift janitor, asked her to take out some random trash that had been overlooked on the previous garbage collection. They had no idea that Clarice Phelps might actually be a scientist. Indeed she was a scientist who would help discover a previously unknown chemical element with 117 protons and 117 electrons now officially known as tennessine.
Clarice Phelps should be proud of her accomplishments. After overcoming the hurdle of being recognized by the scientific community, the media could help her clear the hurdle of getting recognition from the general public. But the media has a problem of not quite knowing how to explain science to the general public in a way the general public can understand.
On an episode of the CBS talk show The Talk from maybe February or March (I’m not sure) that was reran last week, Phelps gave a demonstration of so-called “elephant’s toothpaste,” in which seemingly ordinary ingredients cause an unexpected eruption of foam.
Phelps was joined at a table by Talk hosts Akbar Gbajabiamila and Natalie Morales, all three of them wearing goggles and white lab coats. Phelps had the hosts mix some water with hydrogen peroxide, dish washing liquid and some catalyst that wasn’t specified. This caused a sudden eruption that surprised and puzzled the hosts.
Gbajabiamila was understandably confused as to what had just happened. “Did we discover a new element?” And I was confused at the relevance of this to tennessine. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the catalyst included iodine, which is a halogen, and tennessine is thought to also be a halogen.
Making elephant’s toothpaste is nothing new to avid CBS viewers. If they didn’t see it on the Big Bang Theory episode “The Vengeance Formulation,” maybe they’ve seen it on the NCIS: Hawai’i episode “Family Ties.”
The chemical elements involved in elephant’s toothpaste are hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, iodine, and others, varying in proportions depending on the recipe used. These are elements that have been known for centuries, as they are readily found in nature.
One thing I like about chemistry is how mathematical is. The properties of molecules are determined by the kinds and numbers of atoms they’re comprised of. In turn, the properties of atoms are determined by the numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons they’re comprised of.
An atom has as many electrons as it has protons. The number of neutrons may match the number of protons or it may be slightly more or slightly less. It is the number of neutrons that determine the isotope of the element, which is sort of like a variation of the element.
For example, the lightest isotope of the lightest element, hydrogen, called protium, has only one proton and one electron, but no neutrons. Deuterium has a single neutron to match the single proton and the single electron. And tritium has two neutrons, so it has three particles in its nucleus.
Most elements don’t get special names for their various isotopes. To conform hydrogen’s isotopes to the other elements’ isotopes, we can call protium “hydrogen-1,” deuterium “hydrogen-2” and tritium “hydrogen-3,” according to how many protons and neutrons the atom has.
The three stable isotopes of hydrogen, left to right: protium (labeled “Hydrogen”), deuterium and tritium.
It is impossible for a hydrogen atom to have three or more neutrons. Meaning there’s no hydrogen-4. Do you believe me? You don’t have to. With science, if you doubt anything, you can probably come up with an experiment to prove it or disprove it.
It starts with a testable hypothesis, such as “A hydrogen atom with three neutrons can exist for a few hours before decaying to deuterium and loose neutrons.” Then it’s a matter of figuring out what properties this hypothetical hydrogen isotope would have, how to detect it and how to synthesize it in the lab.
As it turns out, that work has already been done, and it has been proven that a hydrogen atom can exist with three neutrons for a small fraction of a second before decaying to tritium. It’s okay for the hypothesis to be slightly wrong or flat out wrong, as long as the results point us in the right direction.
Helium, which has two protons and two electrons, also has an isotope without neutrons, but it’s as unstable as hydrogen-4. If an atom has more protons than helium, then it better have at least one neutron.
The protons and neutrons cluster together to form the nucleus of an atom. The electrons orbit the nucleus in a way that we can visualize two-dimensionally in a way similar to a moon orbiting a planet, or a planet orbiting a star.
But in an atom, two or more electrons can share an orbit, which is called a “shell.” That’s the case with helium, the atoms of which have only one shell with both of the electrons in the same shell. If an element has more electrons than helium, then it needs another shell.
Helium is the lightest of the so-called “noble gases.” For a long time, scientists thought noble gases could not bond to other elements. So helium oxide was thought to be impossible. It kinda plays into the reason why inhaling helium can be dangerous: too much helium can block access to oxygen.
Lithium has three protons and three electrons, and usually three or four neutrons. The inner shell has two electrons and the outer shell has one electron.
Thank you for reading this far. I’m going to skip ahead to fluorine, which has nine protons and nine electrons, with two electrons in the inner shell and seven in the outer shell. Fluorine is a halogen. Halogens are more reactive than noble gases.
With one more proton and one more electron than fluorine, neon is a noble gas with two electrons in the inner shell and eight in the outer shell.
The number of protons in an atom, which always matches the number of electrons and sometimes matches the number of neutrons, is called the “atomic number.”
And now I’m going to skip ahead to chlorine (17, halogen), argon (18, noble gas), bromine (35, halogen), krypton (36, noble gas, no idea what its effect on Superman would be), iodine (53, halogen), xenon (54, noble gas), astatine (85, halogen) and radon (86, noble gas).
It would be logical to assume that an element’s atomic number correlates directly to when it was discovered. For example, uranium, atomic number 92, was discovered in 1789, whereas nobelium, atomic number 102, was discovered in 1958.
But livermorium, atomic number 116, was discovered in 2000 and oganesson, atomic number 118, was discovered in 2002. Mendeleev’s periodic table suggested the existence of a halogen with atomic number 117.
Given that technetium, atomic number 43, an element “predicted” by the periodic table was finally proven to exist in 1937, a century and a half after the discovery of uranium, the confirmation of element 117 was perhaps just a matter of time until someone came up with a hypothesis leading to the right experiment.
A scientist came up with the hypothesis that berkelium-249 bombarded with calcium-48 would yield a few atoms of element 117. But that would need purified berkelium, because impurities might lead to misleading or disappointing results. And that’s where Clarice Phelps came in.
Phelps, a Navy veteran who worked on the nuclear reactor about the USS Ronald Reagan, CVN-76, was tasked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee with purifying the berkelium prior to the calcium bombardment.
She didn’t know what the end goal of the purification was, but she did it expertly. Almost anyone at ORNL can take the trash out. But only a few people there can purify berkelium, a radioactive rare earth metal.
The experiment produced a few atoms of element 117 that lasted a tiny bit longer than hydrogen-4 atoms. And so, ORNL was granted the right to name the element, so they named it tennessine, in accordance with the standard naming for the lighter halogens (so not “tennessium”).
There is still some doubt as to whether or not tennessine is a halogen, but it does have lots of other properties in common with the confirmed halogens that put it squarely in the same column on the periodic table as fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine and astatine.
Whether or not tennessine is a halogen, ORNL still had reason to celebrate. There was a gala dinner, but Clarice Phelps was left off the gala invitation and the commemorative plaque because the spreadsheet cut off unexpectedly. Yeah right. And the dog ate my homework.
Was Zain Zwyck also left off the plaque? I actually didn’t have to make up a name at the end of the alphabet like that, there’s a real Prof. Ramayya who apparently wasn’t left off the guest list or the plaque.
I’m annoyed that the CNN article says that Phelps is battling “impostor syndrome.” How can you have impostor syndrome if you have already been treated as an impostor? Phelps understands that she needs to be visible as a black woman involved in a newsworthy scientific achievement.
Hopefully the next black woman involved in a newsworthy scientific achievement working after hours in the lab won’t be mistaken for the night shift janitor.
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