Atomic Number: 102 Atomic Symbol: No Atomic Weight: 259 Melting Point: 1,521 F (827 C) Boiling Point: Unknown
Word Origin: Nobelium is named after Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
Discovery: The element was officially discovered in April 1958 in Berkeley, California, by Albert Ghiorso, Glenn Seaborg, Torbørn Sikkeland and John R. Walton. The year before, a team in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Nobel Institute of Physics announced a new element called nobelium that had a half-life of 10 minutes. That discovery could not be replicated, however, though labs in Berkeley and Dubna, Russia, attempted it. The Berkeley team produced an isotope, 254No, with a half-life of three seconds, and the Russians replicated that discovery. Credit for nobelium’s discovery was given to the Berkeley team, who decided to keep the name nobelium.
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Properties of nobelium
Nobelium is a member of the actinide series and little is known about it. There are 10 recognized isotopes of nobelium. The most stable is 259No, which has a half-life of about 58 minutes. [See Periodic Table of the Elements]
Sources of nobelium
Nobelium is artificially produced, and it has never been made in great quantities. It can be produced through bombarding Curium-246 with Carbon-12 ions.
Uses of nobelium
Because nobelium has only been produced in small quantities, its only use is within scientific research.
(Sources: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Jefferson Lab)
