The Element Meitnerium [Click for Isotope Data] Atomic Number:
109 Atomic Weight: 278 Melting Point: Unknown Boiling Point:
Unknown Phase at Room Temperature: Solid Element Classification:
Metal Period Number: 7 Group Number: 9 Group Name: none
Radioactive and Artificially Produced What's in a name? Named
after the scientist Lise Meitner. Say what? Meitnerium is
pronounced as met-NEAR-ee-um. History and Uses: Meitnerium was
first produced by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenber and
their team working at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung
in Darmstadt, Germany in 1982. They bombarded atoms of
bismuth-209 with ions of iron-58 with a device known as a linear
accelerator. This produced atoms of meitnerium-266, an isotope
with a half-life of about 3.8 milliseconds (0.0038 seconds), and
a free neutron. Meitnerium's most stable isotope,
meitnerium-278, has a half-life of about 8 seconds. It decays
into bohrium-274 through alpha decay. Since only small amounts
of meitnerium have ever been produced, it current