Uranium atomic weight

Ocourrenoe — History — Treatment of Uranium Minerals — Preparation of Uranium—Ph37sioal Properties—Spectrum—Chemical Properties—Pyrophoric Uranium—Colloidal Uranium— Atomic Weight—Isotope.s of Uranium—Alloys. 

Thor, Scandinavian god of war) Discovered by Berzelius in 1828. Much of the internal heat the earth produces has been attributed to thorium and uranium. Because of its atomic weight, valence, etc., it is now considered to be the second member of the actinide series of elements. 

Each of the elements has a number of isotopes (2,4), all radioactive and some of which can be obtained in isotopicaHy pure form. More than 200 in number and mosdy synthetic in origin, they are produced by neutron or charged-particle induced transmutations (2,4). The known radioactive isotopes are distributed among the 15 elements approximately as follows actinium and thorium, 25 each protactinium, 20 uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, californium, einsteinium, and fermium, 15 each herkelium, mendelevium, nobehum, and lawrencium, 10 each. There is frequently a need for values to be assigned for the atomic weights of the actinide elements. Any precise experimental work would require a value for the isotope or isotopic mixture being used, but where there is a purely formal demand for atomic weights, mass numbers that are chosen on the basis of half-life and availabiUty have customarily been used. A Hst of these is provided in Table 1. 

Lead, atomic number 82, is a member of Group 14 (IVA) of the Periodic Table. Ordinary lead is bluish grey and is a mixture of isotopes of mass number 204 (15%), 206 (23.6%), 207 (22.6%), and 208 (52.3%). The average atomic weight of lead from different origins may vary as much as 0.04 units. The stable isotopes are products of decay of three naturally radioactive elements (see Radioactivity, natural) comes from the uranium series (see Uraniumand... 

This book presents a unified treatment of the chemistry of the elements. At present 112 elements are known, though not all occur in nature of the 92 elements from hydrogen to uranium all except technetium and promethium are found on earth and technetium has been detected in some stars. To these elements a further 20 have been added by artificial nuclear syntheses in the laboratory. Why are there only 90 elements in nature Why do they have their observed abundances and why do their individual isotopes occur with the particular relative abundances observed Indeed, we must also ask to what extent these isotopic abundances commonly vary in nature, thus causing variability in atomic weights and possibly jeopardizing the classical means of determining chemical composition and structure by chemical analysis. 

This value refers to the natural mixture of uranium isotopes, i.e. it is the atomic weight. Variations are possible because (i) some geological samples have anomalous isotopic compositions, and (ii) commercially available samples may have been depleted in The value for itself is 238.0508. 

He also points out several times the important evidential role played by the success of Mendeleev s contrapredictions —the corrections of atomic weight values previously assigned to already known elements—such as beryllium, uranium and tellurium—so that they fitted into his table smoothly. And indeed the most elaborate statement of Brush s general conclusion seems to be the following ... 

Ans. (a) Both have the same number of fruits (12), but since each watermelon weighs more than a cherry, the dozen watermelons weigh more than the dozen cherries. (b) Both have the same number of atoms (6.02 x 1023), but since uranium has a greater atomic weight (sec the periodic table), the mole of uranium weighs more. 

Act = 226.5 the naming of the parents follows the nomenclature employed by Fajans in which the element uranium is referred to as UrI. A place in the periodic table is then defined by a specific row and a specific column. From the data, one then readily obtains the row and column of each of the elemental daughters. Since the characterization of decay products emphasized the fact that many of these products are chemically indistinguishable from one another, it is of course expected that many of the places in the last two rows of the periodic table are occupied by more than one elementary material. What is surprising is that these chemically equivalent materials have different atomic weights, some differing by as much as eight units. 

From Figs. 1.1 and 1.2 it follows that the main end products of the uranium and thorium series are isotopes of lead (at the time referred to as Pb206.5 and ThO2208.4). The end products are thus isotopes of lead differing by two mass units. This observation became the motivation for the measurement of atomic weights of lead samples separated from thorium and uranium minerals. In his Nobel Lecture, Soddy describes this work as follows ... 

The masses of isotopes can be measured with accuracies better than parts per billion (ppb), e.g., m40Ar = 39.9623831235 0.000000005 u. Unfortunately, determinations of abundance ratios are less accurate, causing errors of several parts per million (ppm) in relative atomic mass. The real limiting factor, however, comes from the variation of isotopic abundances from natural samples, e.g., in case of lead which is the final product of radioactive decay of uranium, the atomic weight varies by 500 ppm depending on the Pb/U ratios in the lead ore. [8]... 

The major characteristic of technetium is that it is the only element within the 29 transition metal-to-nonmetal elements that is artificially produced as a uranium-fission product in nuclear power plants. It is also the tightest (in atomic weight) of all elements with no stable isotopes. Since all of technetiums isotopes emit harmful radiation, they are stored for some time before being processed by solvent extraction and ion-exchange techniques. The two long-lived radioactive isotopes, Tc-98 and Tc-99, are relatively safe to handle in a well-equipped laboratory. 

Uranium is the fourth metal in the actinide series. It looks much like other actinide metallic elements with a silvery luster. It is comparatively heavy, yet malleable and ductile. It reacts with air to form an oxide of uranium. It is one of the few naturally radioactive elements that is fissionable, meaning that as it absorbs more neutrons, it splits into a series of other lighter elements (lower atomic weights) through a process of alpha decay and beta emission that is known as the uranium decay series, as follows U-238—> Th-234—>Pa-234—>U-234—> Th-230 Ra-226 Rn-222 Po-218 Pb-2l4 At-218 Bi-2l4 Rn-218 Po-2l4 Ti-210—>Pb-210—>Bi-210 Ti-206—>Pb-206 (stable isotope of lead,... 

These two kinds of lead are now known to be isotopes, or inseparable elements which belong in the same space in the periodic table and yet differ in atomic weight and in radioactive properties. According to Frederick Soddy, the first clear recognition of isotopes as chemically inseparable substances was that of H. N. McCoy and W. H. Ross in 1907 (75,107). Strictly speaking, the science of radioactivity has revealed only five naturally occurring new elements with distinctive physical and chemical properties polonium, thoron, radium, actinium, and uranium X2. All the other natural radioactive elements share previously occupied places in the periodic table. 

Uranium-238 emits an alpha particle to become an isotope of thorium. This unstable element emits a beta particle to become the element now known as Protactinium (Pa), which then emits another beta particle to become an isotope of uranium. This chain proceeds through another isotope of thorium, through radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, thallium and lead. The final product is lead-206. The series that starts with thorium-232 ends with lead-208. Soddy was able to isolate the different lead isotopes in high enough purity to demonstrate using chemical techniques that the atomic weights of two samples of lead with identical chemical and spectroscopic properties had different atomic weights. The final picture of these elements reveals that there are several isotopes for each of them. 

Thorium A naturally radioactive element with atomic number 90 and, as found in nature, an atomic weight of approximately 232. The fertile thorium 232 isotope is abundant and can be transmitted to fissionable uranium 233 by neutron irradiation. 

Lead is of interest us being the terminal product of radioactive decay. Thus, while ordinary lead has the atomic wcighi 207.11 (being composed of I. 47 r oJPb. 26.205, - " Ph. 2(1.H > " Pb and 51.55. . - " Phi. the isotopic composition, and hence the atomic weight, varies somewhat it) lead from meteorites, from deep-sealed rocks and from uranium ores (the last being sonn-vvhat less dense, as would be expected from the fact that ""Ph is the end produei ol the uranium series I. These variations in isotopic composition of lead pcnnii of calculations. it the age ol ihe eanh laud (he metcoritesi. 

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