Atomic Number 61 (Noun)
Meaning
A soft silvery metallic element of the rare earth group having no stable isotope; was discovered in radioactive form as a fission product of uranium.
Classification
Nouns denoting substances.
Examples
- The element promethium has the atomic number 61, and its name comes from the Greek Titan Prometheus.
- Scientists first detected promethium with atomic number 61 in 1945 among the fission products of uranium.
- A small sample of the soft silvery metal promethium was finally isolated in 1966 due to its difficult extraction from nuclear reactor fuel rods because the element with atomic number 61 is not readily available.
- The existence of an element with atomic number 61 had been predicted in 1878, and its reality became concrete when the first synthetic sample of promethium was produced in 1945.
- The only available source of promethium consists of byproduct materials from nuclear reactors, which release minute amounts of the element with the atomic number 61 as part of the waste gases.