The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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Nobelium is a man-made, radioactive element denoted by the atomic symbol, No. It has an atomic number of 102 and an atomic weight of 259. Ten isotopes of nobelium have been produced. The longest lived isotope, nobelium-259, has a half-life of 58 hours ± 5 minutes. Little is known about the chemical properties of nobelium because of the difficulty in producing a stable enough sample.
First reports of the discovery of nobelium appeared in 1957. A team of researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois, the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Great Britain, and the Nobel Institute for Physics in Sweden announced the discovery of the element. The Commission on Atomic Weights of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) accepted the results almost immediately, and approved the proposed name for the element, nobelium. That decision turned out to be premature. In 1958, a team of workers at the University of California, Berkeley, including Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg, were unable to confirm the earlier results. They were, however, able to produce an isotope of element 102 with a mass of 254. They obtained this isotope by bombarding a target of curium with carbon-12 nuclei. In view of the naming decision already made by IUPAC, the Berkeley group agreed to accept nobelium as the name for element 102.