Transuranium Turmoil! Lanthanides and Actinides! Each Showing Their Special Skills! Blazing a New Trail! Marie Curie's Notes

France, Radium Institute.

Irène and her husband were conducting research on Transuranium Elements.

This experiment was a typical combination of physics and chemistry.

Bombarding uranium with neutrons was a physical process, but separating the products of the nuclear reaction was a chemical process.

Thanks to the birth of Quantum Mechanics, chemistry had now made leaps and bounds.

The most important breakthrough was that chemists had gained a deeper understanding of the elements on the Periodic Table.

They only needed to study the arrangement of electrons outside the nucleus to theoretically predict an element's properties.

This had been unimaginable in the past.

For example, chlorine gas was poisonous and extremely reactive because chlorine atoms possessed a powerful oxidizing ability.

Oxidizing ability referred to how easily something could "seize electrons."

The more easily an element could snatch electrons from the outside world, the stronger its oxidizing ability.

But why did chlorine possess oxidizing ability, and why was it even stronger than oxygen's?

With the theory of electron arrangements outside the nucleus, this could be explained.

A chlorine atom had seven electrons in its outermost shell, while an oxygen atom had six.

Atoms all tended toward keeping their electrons outside the nucleus in a stable state, and eight electrons was one such stable state.

Therefore, chlorine atoms were better at seizing electrons than oxygen.

Thus, chlorine atoms had stronger oxidizing ability.

Following this theory, chemists systematically analyzed every element on the Periodic Table.

They discovered a strange phenomenon.

On the Periodic Table, the fifteen elements from element 57 [lanthanum] to element 71 [lutetium] had slightly different electron arrangements outside their nuclei, yet their chemical properties were extremely similar.

Therefore, chemists grouped these elements into a separate series, occupying the same position on the Periodic Table.

These were the famous Lanthanides.

They included: lanthanum,