| Discovery date | 1950 |
| Discovered by | Stanley Thompson, Kenneth Street, Jr., Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn Seaborg |
| Origin of the name | Californium is named for the university and state of California, where the element was first made. |
| Allotropes |
|
Cf
Californium
98
[251]
| Group | Actinides | Melting point | 900°C, 1652°F, 1173 K |
| Period | 7 | Boiling point | Unknown |
| Block | f | Density (g cm−3) | 15.1 |
| Atomic number | 98 | Relative atomic mass | [251] |
| State at 20°C | Solid | Key isotopes | 249Cf, 252Cf |
| Electron configuration | [Rn] 5f107s2 | CAS number | 7440-71-3 |
| ChemSpider ID | 22433 | ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database | |
Image explanation
The image is based on the state flag of California and features a grizzly bear (a symbol of great strength) and a lone star.
Appearance
Californium is a radioactive metal.
Uses
Californium is a very strong neutron emitter. It is used in portable metal detectors, for identifying gold and silver ores, to identify water and oil layers in oil wells and to detect metal fatigue and stress in aeroplanes.
Biological role
Californium has no known biological role. It is toxic due to its radioactivity.
Natural abundance
Californium did not exist in weighable amounts until ten years after its discovery. It is prepared, in milligram amounts only, by the neutron bombardment of plutonium-239.
Californium was first made in 1950 at Berkeley, California, by a team consisting of Stanley Thompson, Kenneth Street Jr., Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn Seaborg. They made it by firing helium nuclei (alpha particles) at curium-242. The process yielded the isotope californium-245 which has a half-life of 44 minutes. Curium is intensely radioactive and it had taken the team three years to collect the few milligrams needed for the experiment, and even so only a few micrograms of this were used. Their endeavours produced around 5,000 atoms of californium, but there was enough to show it really was a new element.
| Atomic radius, non-bonded (Å) | 2.45 | Covalent radius (Å) | 1.68 |
| Electron affinity (kJ mol−1) | Unknown |
Electronegativity (Pauling scale) |
Unknown |
|
Ionisation energies (kJ mol−1) |
1st
606.092
2nd
1138.5
3rd
-
4th
-
5th
-
6th
-
7th
-
8th
-
|
||
| Common oxidation states | 4, 3 | ||||
| Isotopes | Isotope | Atomic mass | Natural abundance (%) | Half life | Mode of decay |
| 249Cf | 249.075 | - | 351 y | α | |
| 8 x 1010 y | sf | ||||
| 250Cf | 250.076 | - | 13.1 y | α | |
| 1.7 x 104 y | sf | ||||
| 251Cf | 251.080 | - | 9 x 102 y | α | |
| 252Cf | 252.082 | - | 2.65 y | α | |
| 86 y | sf | ||||
|
Specific heat capacity (J kg−1 K−1) |
Unknown | Young's modulus (GPa) | Unknown | |||||||||||
| Shear modulus (GPa) | Unknown | Bulk modulus (GPa) | Unknown | |||||||||||
| Vapour pressure | ||||||||||||||
| Temperature (K) |
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| Pressure (Pa) |
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| Listen to Californium Podcast |
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Transcript :
Chemistry in its element: californium (Promo) You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World, the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (End promo) Chris Smith This week, let's go surfing. Brian Clegg What comes to mind when you think of California? Surfing and the Beach Boys? Hollywood and Governor Schwarzenegger? The University of California at Berkeley has ensured that California also has its place in the periodic table with element 98, the tenth of the actinides, californium. Although it seems perfectly sensible to celebrate the location where it was discovered, californium's name was, in fact, a failure for the team behind its production. Glen T. Seaborg and his co-workers had named americium to parallel the lanthanide above it in the periodic table, europium. They went on to name curium and berkelium in a way that was also derived from the equivalent lanthanide. So, for instance, the actinide berkelium was named after Berkeley because the lanthanide above it, terbium, was named after the Swedish village Ytterby where it was quarried. When it came to californium, an artificial element first produced in 1950, the equivalent lanthanide would be dysprosium, which comes from the Greek for 'hard to get.' After some head-scratching, Seaborg and his team gave up on the search for an equivalent and just went for the location of the lab. They had already discarded a list of names including cyclotronium and cyclonium, after the device used in producing the first californium, along with the more than a little cheesy radlabium, reflecting the team's origins as part of the radiation laboratory or rad lab. They did, though, manage a neat bit of rationalization, arguing that they paralleled dysprosium's 'hard to get' meaning because 'the searchers for another element a century ago found it difficult to get to California.' This referred to the state's inaccessibility during the nineteenth century gold rush. The first isotope of californium produced was californium 245, with a half life of just 44 minutes. The team battered a target of curium with alpha particles using a cyclotron, an early type of particle accelerator still in use today, particularly in medical applications. The cyclotron accelerates charged particles using electrodes that switch rapidly between attracting and repelling as the particles spiral around a circular chamber until they collide with a target. In this case the collision produced californium and a spare neutron. The most stable of californium's 20 or so produced isotopes is californium 251, which has a half life of 898 years, though many of the isotopes have half-lives measured in minutes. It's most often made now by starting with berkelium 249 and adding neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Although this is a purely artificial element here on earth, it may exist in space as one of the many by-products of supernovas. When it comes to practical uses, this slivery substance is an excellent neutron emitter. This makes it handy for kick-starting nuclear reactors, where a high neutron flow is required to get the chain reaction going. It also means that, in principle, californium would make effective small scale nuclear weapons, requiring as little as five kilograms of californium 251 to achieve critical mass - about half the amount of plutonium required for a bomb - but in practice it is so fiddly to produce that even at this scale it is unlikely to be used. As well as providing the starter for reactors, small amounts of californium have also found their way into a number of devices requiring a flow of neutrons, whether it is specialist detectors or radiotherapy, as a last resort for some cancer treatments where gentler sources have failed. Perhaps californium's most common application is in moisture gauges used in potential oil wells. These detectors fire fast neutrons through the material to be tested. Hydrogen nuclei, typical of those in water and oil, tend to slow down the neutrons, so a slow neutron detector can be used to search for telltale hydrogen. The neutrons from californium can also be used in prospecting for silver and gold, using a technique called neutron activation analysis which bombards an area to be tested with neutrons and searches for the gamma rays emitted from the bombarded substance, with a characteristic signature. In the end, though, it's californium's name that remains most significant. Perhaps, to parallel dysprosium's 'hard to get', it should have been lethium, from the latin for 'lying hidden' - but maybe that sounds too like lithium. Shortly after californium was first produced, the name was the subject of a running joke between its discoverers and the New Yorker magazine. The magazine observed that the discoverers had missed a trick. It commented that 'California's busy scientists will undoubtedly come up with another atom or two one of these days, and the university might well have anticipated that. Now it has lost forever the chance of immortalizing itself in the atomic tables with some such sequence as universitium (97), offium (98), californium (99), berkelium (100).' Spelling out 'University of California, Berkeley,' across the table. The discoverers fired back that the problem with calling elements 97 and 98 universitium and offium was the appalling possibility that some New Yorker could discover 99 and 100 and name them newium and yorkium. The New Yorker staff claimed already to be at work on these elements. but as yet all the journalists had achieved was to think up the names. As it is, we can never be quite sure if 'californium' refers to the state or the university - and it is hard to produce - so in these respects, at least, californium parallels dysprosium as an element that's 'hard to get'. Chris Smith Well in that case, if we're naming things after other things that are hard to get hold of, how about a taxi in rush hourium or, worse still perhaps, what about a James Blunt CD you can tolerateium? That would be my suggestion. That was Brian Clegg, with this week's element Californium. Next time, it's over to Sarah Staniland. Sarah Staniland I always find the question 'what's your favourite element' a difficult one. There are several front runners for vastly varying reasons; however, always a top contender has to be cobalt because it excels in several important character traits: Cobalt has amazing beauty and strength, as well as great cooperation. Chris Smith I thought she was talking about me for a minute there. That's Sarah Staniland from Leeds University who will be here next week with the story of cobalt. Do try and join us. Thanks for listening, I'm Chris Smith, and goodbye. (Promo) Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.com. There's more information and other episodes of Chemistry in its element on our website at chemistryworld.org/elements. (End promo)
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Visual Elements images and videos
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
© Murray Robertson 1998-2017.
Data
W. M. Haynes, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, CRC Press/Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 95th Edition, Internet Version 2015, accessed December 2014.
Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants, Kaye & Laby Online, 16th edition, 1995. Version 1.0 (2005), accessed December 2014.
J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai, and R. A. Dragoset, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (version 4.1), 2015, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, accessed November 2016.
T. L. Cottrell, The Strengths of Chemical Bonds, Butterworth, London, 1954.
Uses and properties
John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, Oxford University Press, New York, 2nd Edition, 2011.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education, It’s Elemental - The Periodic Table of Elements, accessed December 2014.
Periodic Table of Videos, accessed December 2014.
Supply risk data
Derived in part from material provided by the British Geological Survey © NERC.
History text
Elements 1-112, 114, 116 and 117 © John Emsley 2012. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 © Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.
Podcasts
Produced by The Naked Scientists.
Periodic Table of Videos
Created by video journalist Brady Haran working with chemists at The University of Nottingham.
