Astatine Research Paper

Contrary to the title, the discovery of astatine was anything but a momentary process. Many scientists discovered different astatine isotopes, atoms with the same number of protons but differing numbers of neutrons, but were unable to either reproduce their results or keep the isotope in existence for any useful amount of time. After decades of possible discovery and rediscovery, astatine was officially included in the periodic table of elements with the abbreviation At and an atomic number of 85. Considered a Halogen and sharing many traits of Halogens, especially Iodine, astatine lies in column seven and period six of the current periodic table. Like many of the elements, astatine’s initial inspiration for discovery was to fill-in a missing part of the periodic table. In 1872, Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev wrote a paper on the periodic table which included the element francium. As noted in Astatine: Atomic Number 85, “The prehistory of astatine resembles and is closely associated with that of francium” (Berei 1985). Astatine, in Mendeleev’s 1906 edition of Principles of Chemistry, was first alluded to …show more content…
In 1953, Hyde and Ghiorso were able to find 219At with large amounts of 227Ac produced in a nuclear reactor. In order to isolate a naturally occurring version of astatine, the product was evaporated on Pt filament. It was then heated to a temperature high enough to volatilize the astatine, but not the other impurities. After 15 seconds of this process, volatilized astatine was collected. (Berei 1985) Unfortunately, the product only had a half-life of .9 minutes. Additional experimentation increased the half-life to 4-6 minutes. Other ways of finding naturally occurring astatine were found, including an experiment with Peppard and colleagues using 225Ac to create 217At. After this, astatine could be considered as “naturally