Hassium Facts - Hs or Element 108

Hassium Facts - Hs or Element 108 Element atomic number 108 is hassium, which has the element symbol Hs. Hassium is one of the manmade or synthetic radioactive elements. Only about 100 atoms of this element have been produced so there is not a lot of experimental data for it. Properties are predicted based on the behavior of other elements in the same element group. Hassium is expected to be a metallic silver or gray metal at room temperature, much like the element osmium. All of the isotopes of hassium are radioactive. Martin Diebel / Getty Images Here are interesting facts about this rare metal: Discovery:  Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Munzenber and co-workers produced hassium at GSI in Darmstadt, Germany in 1984. The GSI team bombarded a lead-208 target with iron-58 nuclei. However, Russian scientists had attempted to synthesize hassium in 1978 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. Their initial data was inconclusive, so they repeated the experiments five years later, producing Hs-270, Hs-264, and Hs-263. Element Name:  Before its official discovery, hassium was referred to as element 108, eka-osmium or unniloctium. Hassium was the subject of a naming controversy over which team should be given official credit for discovering element 108. The 1992 IUPAC/IUPAP Transfermium Working Group (TWG) recognized the GSI team, stating that their work was more detailed. Peter Armbruster and his colleagues proposed the name hassium from the Latin  Hassias  meaning Hess or Hesse, the German state, where this element was first produced. In 1994, an IUPAC committee recommended making the elements name hahnium (Hn) in honor of the German physicist Otto Hahn. This was despite the convention of allowing the discovering team the right to suggest a name. The German discoverers and the American Chemical Society (ACS) protested the name change and the IUPAC finally allowed element 108 to be officially named hassium (Hs) in 1997. Atomic Number:  108 Symbol:  Hs Atomic Weight:  [269] Group: Group 8, d-block element, transition metal Electron Configuration:  [Rn] 7s2  5f14  6d6 Appearance:  Hassium is believed to be a dense solid metal at room temperature and pressure. If enough of the element were produced, it is expected it would have a shiny, metallic appearance. Its possible hassium could be even more dense than the heaviest known element, osmium. The predicted density of hassium is  41  g/cm3. Properties: Its likely hassium reacts with oxygen in air to form a volatile tetraoxide. Following periodic law, hassium should be the heaviest element in group 8 of the periodic table. It is predicted that hassium has a high melting point, crystallizes in the hexagonal close-packed structure (hcp), and has a bulk modulus (resistance to compression) on par with diamond (442 GPa). Differences between hassium and its homologue osmium would likely be due to relativistic effects. Sources:  Hassium was first synthesized by bombarding lead-208 with iron-58 nuclei. Only 3 atoms of hassium were produced at this time. In 1968, Russian scientist Victor Cherdyntsev claimed to have discovered naturally-occurring hassium in a sample of  molybdenite, but this was not verified. To date, hassium has not been found in nature. The short half-lives of the known isotopes of hassium mean no primordial hassium could have survived to the present day. However, its still possible nuclear isomers or isotopes with longer half-lives might be found in trace quantities. Element Classification:  Hassium is a transition metal that  is expected to have properties similar to those of the platinum group of transition metals. Like the other elements in this group, hassium is expected to have oxidation states of 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. The 8, 6, 4, and 2 states will likely be the most stable, based on the elements electron configuration. Isotopes:  12 isotopes of hassium are known, from masses  263 to 277. All of them are radioactive. The most stable isotope is  Hs-269, which has a half-life of 9.7 seconds. Hs-270 is of particular interest because it possesses magic number of nuclear stability. The atomic number 108 is a proton magic number for deformed (nonspherical) nuclei, while 162 is a neutron magic number for deformed nuclei. This doubly magic nucleus has a low decay energy compared with other hassium isotopes. More research is needed to determine whether or not Hs-270 is an isotope in the proposed island of stability. Health Effects:  While the platinum group metals tend not to be particularly toxic, hassium presents a health risk because of its significant radioactivity. Uses:  At present, hassium is only used for research. Sources Emsley, John (2011). Natures Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (New ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 215–7. ISBN 978-0-19-960563-7.Hoffman, Darleane C.; Lee, Diana M.; Pershina, Valeria (2006). Transactinides and the future elements. In Morss; Edelstein, Norman M.; Fuger, Jean. The Chemistry of the Actinide and Transactinide Elements (3rd ed.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer ScienceBusiness Media. ISBN 1-4020-3555-1.Names and symbols of transfermium elements (IUPAC Recommendations 1994).  Pure and Applied Chemistry  66  (12): 2419. 1994.Mà ¼nzenberg, G.; Armbruster, P.; Folger, H.; et al. (1984). The identification of element 108 (PDF). Zeitschrift fà ¼r Physik A. 317 (2): 235–236. doi:10.1007/BF01421260Oganessian, Yu. Ts.; Ter-Akopian, G. M.; Pleve, A. A.; et al. (1978). ОÐ ¿Ã'‹Ã'‚Ã'‹ Ð ¿Ã ¾ Ã' Ã ¸Ã ½Ã'‚Ð µÃ ·Ã'Æ' 108 Ã' Ã »Ã µÃ ¼Ã µÃ ½Ã'‚Ð ° Ð ² Ã'€Ð µÃ °Ã ºÃ'†Ð ¸Ã ¸ [Experiments on the sy nthesis of element 108 in the 226Ra48Ca reaction] (in Russian). Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.

Definition and Examples of the Straw Man Fallacy

Definition and Examples of the Straw Man Fallacy The straw man is a  fallacy in which an opponents argument is overstated or misrepresented in order to be more easily attacked or refuted. The technique often takes quotes out of context or, more often, incorrectly paraphrases or summarizes an opponents position. Then after defeating the position, the attacker claims to have beaten the real thing. Although the term straw man is a recent coinage, the concept is ancient. In the Topics, Aristotle acknowledges that in argument it would be inappropriate to interpret as someones position an opinion that he did not express or is not committed to, in virtue of what he said (Douglas Walton, Methods of Argumentation). The name of the fallacy represents the idea that although a straw man may look like a human, it wont put up any resistance in a fight. The straw man fallacy also goes by the name Aunt Sally, particularly in Great Britain. Straw Man in Commercials Commercials make use of straw man fallacies. In the famous Wheres the beef? Wendys campaign, the commercials exaggerate the tiny amount of meat that other chains use in their burgers to show how much bigger and better its burgers are. Straw Man in Politics Straw man has always been the stock-in-trade of advertisers and political smear campaigns, illustrate authors Nancy Cavender and Howard Kahane in their book Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. A group called Common Sense Issues made a million automated phone calls to voters in the 2008 South Carolina primaries claiming that John McCain has voted to use unborn babies in medical research. This was a gross distortion of his position to support research on stem cells gathered from embryos (12th ed. Wadsworth, 2014). During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton was for open borders. He took a comment out of context from a speech she gave to a Brazilian bank about trade and energy to twist it into a statement that preyed on some peoples fears of immigrants. He claimed she wanted people to be able to enter the border without going through any kind of process at all, which isnt true. His sound-byte distortion likely had an effect on voters, as immigration was a big issue in the campaign, and his repetition of the claim was easier to remember than her stances about nuances in the complex issue. Sometimes people morph the straw man into a warning about a slippery slope where allowing one side to win would put humanity on a course of destruction. Any time someone begins an attack with So youre saying we should all just... or Everyone knows..., you can bet a straw man is coming, wrote author David McRaney. Straw men can also be born out of ignorance. If someone says, Scientists tell us we all come from monkeys, and thats why I homeschool, this person is using a straw man, because science doesnt say we all come from monkeys. (You Are Not So Smart.  Penguin, 2011) Countering the Straw Man To refute a straw man attack during a debate, point out the fallacy and how it is incorrect. If you ignore it and the attacker keeps harping on it, the real issue could get buried in the straw. If you try and defend what the opponent said is your position, it gets increasingly difficult to show how the opponent distorted your views.