Promethium (version 1) - Periodic Table of Videos
NEWER PROMETHIUM VIDEO: https://youtu.be/HplP_MY78NQ Promethium is element number 61. More links in description below ↓↓↓ Support Periodic Videos on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/periodi...
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Ok so promethium is actually my least favourite lanthanide because I can’t actually work with it. It’s highly radioactive and at any one time on the earth’s surface there is not an awful lot of it so you can’t physically get enough of it to do any chemistry with. So promethium is the only one of the rare earth elements that is radioactive, but because it’s radioactive and the atoms decay away it’s not found in nature. So it was only after the start of nuclear research that people discovered promethium, even some of the products from the decay from other radioactive elements. And you can see this quite well: this is an old chemistry book that I’ve got, written by Aston, the famous scientist who discovered isotopes – atoms of the same el...
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Ok so promethium is actually my least favourite lanthanide because I can’t actually work with it. It’s highly radioactive and at any one time on the earth’s surface there is not an awful lot of it so you can’t physically get enough of it to do any chemistry with. So promethium is the only one of the rare earth elements that is radioactive, but because it’s radioactive and the atoms decay away it’s not found in nature. So it was only after the start of nuclear research that people discovered promethium, even some of the products from the decay from other radioactive elements. And you can see this quite well: this is an old chemistry book that I’ve got, written by Aston, the famous scientist who discovered isotopes – atoms of the same el...
