Wonderfest: Modern Alchemy

Like thoroughly scientific alchemists, nuclear chemists work to create elements that don’t exist naturally on Earth. These new super-heavy atoms could be long-lived, residing on proton-packed islands of stability off the far end of the periodic table. What new elements have most recently been added to the periodic table? How do scientists construct these fundamental novelties? How do investigators deduce the physical and chemical properties of the new elements from just a few ephemeral atoms?

Our Wonderfest speaker is Dr. Jacklyn Gates, leader of the Heavy Element Group in the Nuclear Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.