O Technetium, O Technetium, how lovely are your...uh, protons!

[madlori]

I am having a quiet day

Comments

[ncp]

People actually make students memorize the Table? I can understand making kids memorize the various Groups and Periods, and trends in the Table, and maybe even the numbers and masses of commonly used elements like C or Na. But WHY would you have to know the atomic number of Vanadium??!?!?!

[ladyphoenixia]

My school made us learn the first 20, but then, that's kinda useful, remembering oxygen and carbon and such, which might make your life simpler to remember instead of looking up.

(Also, yay technetium! Always my favourite radioactive element all through high school)

[strangersnight]

That's actually really cool. If only my chem professor could make it that interesting....

[rightwhere_u_r]

SQUEEEEEEE! How cool of you to write a post about Technetium and Molybdenum because I used to work for a nuclear research reactor that produced radio-isotopes for medical purposes (they used these two radioactive elements as the basis for nuclear medicine) AND today I started my new job as a communications advisor at an atomic and molecular physics research institute here in Holland and which element did I point out to my colleague on the periodic table of elements this afternoon? Molybdenum! :)
Ok, off to read Zero now...

Mel

[eawen_penallion]

Oh, were you at Petten? Many years ago I visited the facility thanks to an introduction from our distributer here in Ireland. I thought the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation in the reactor core was sooo beautiful LOL!

[rightwhere_u_r]

Yes, I was in Petten, it was 2002, when were you there? Do you work with Tyco Healthcare/Mallinckrodt?

[eawen_penallion]

I was a visitor in 1990. I work in a Nuclear medicine department here in Ireland, and Tyco/Mallinckrodt (Covidien?) supply many of our radioisotopes and kits :-)

[eawen_penallion]

As a radiographer in charge of a Nuclear Medicine department, I have to say that one of the isotopes of Technetium, Tc-99m (metastable) is the 'workhorse' of the department. Obtained as the 'daughter' product of Molybdenum99, it is able to be radiolabeled to a wide variety of tracers for use in diagnostic scans. It has a peak of 140kev and a half-life of approximately 6 hours, so it is eminently suitable for diagnostic purposes.

Not bad for a 'manufactured' element!

[madlori]

The reason that all our Tc compounds are labeled as Tc-99 is that all the commercially available compounds are all Tc-99, so if you're making a Tc compound in the lab, it must be the 99 isotope even if you don't say so explicitly.

If you're doing theoretical studies all bets are off because you're not constrained by what you can buy from Aldrich.

[rightwhere_u_r]

Lori, can I PLEASSSSSSE use your avatar? Pretty please?

[madlori]

Sure. Just make sure you go to my userpics page and get the appropriate crediting.

[cirakaite]

The only reason to memorise the table of elements is to have some hope in hell of matching speed and singing along with Tom Lehrer -g-

[madlori]

It will probably not shock you to learn that I used to be able to sing that song at Lehrer speed.

Of course memorizing the actual table won't help you with it since the song is in a totally different order.

[cirakaite]

But if you know the elements, it makes it easier. Or rather, it's the other way around - if you're working (way too hard) at matching Tom Lehrer, you end up surprisingly familiar with the table. Or so it seemed when i was in Gr 9 -g-