In 2010, a team of scientists from Russia and the United States reported creation of the first atom of element 117, which is named tennessine, and whose symbol is Ts. The synthesis involved the collision of a target of 24997Bk with accelerated ions of an isotope which we will denote Q. The product atom, which we will call Z, immediately releases neutrons and forms 294117Ts: 24997Bk + Q¡Z¡294117Ts + 3 10n (b) Isotope Q is unusual in that it is very long-lived (its half-life is on the order of 1019 yr) in spite of having an unfavorable neutron-to-proton ratio (Figure 21.1). Can you propose a reason for its unusual stability?

Video transcript

Hey everyone, we're told that the creation of liver mori um involved the collision of a target curium 48 with accelerated ions of a nice top, which we will denote as E after the collision, the product adam immediately releases neutrons and livermore Iem is formed. Isotope Azi is remarkable in that it is very long lived despite having an unfavorable neutron to proton ratio. Its half life is on the scale of 10 to the 19th years. Can you offer an explanation for its unusual stability? To answer this question, we first need to determine the number of protons neutrons and our mass number of our isotope asi. Starting off with our number of protons, We can go ahead and label this as X. And we know that the number of protons of our Curium which is plus that X will equal the number of protons of our liver mori um which is 1 16. So we can go ahead and subtract the 96 on both sides And we end up with an X. of 20. Now to calculate our maths number, we can take the same steps. So we take the mass number of Curium which is and we can go ahead and add that X. And these two will be equal to the mass number of liver mori um which is 96. Subtracting 2 48 from both sides. We end up with a mass number of 48. And lastly we want to calculate the number of neutrons and so we can go ahead and take our mass number and subtract our number of protons. So, plugging in those values, we get 48 -20, which gets us to a value of 28. So Isotope C has 20 protons And 28 Neutrons. And this is important because these are included in our magic numbers. And as we've learned, our magic numbers indicate the number of filled nuclear shells, which tend to identify the isotopes that are much more stable as compared to other elements. So essentially the magic numbers show the energies of each new Cleon. So to answer a question, the unusual stability of isotope C is related to the magic numbers of protons and neutrons. And this is going to be our final answer. Now, I hope that made sense. And let us know if you have any questions.