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Selasa, 10 Februari 2009

Astatine

Astatine is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol At and atomic number 85. This radioactive element occurs naturally from uranium-235 and uranium-238 decay; it is the heaviest of the halogens.

Notable characteristics
This highly radioactive element has been confirmed by mass spectrometers to behave chemically much like other halogens, especially iodine (it would probably accumulate in the thyroid gland like iodine). Astatine is thought to be more metallic than iodine. Researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have performed experiments that have identified and measured elementary reactions that involve astatine; however, chemical research into astatine is limited by its extreme rarity, which is a result of its extremely short half-life.
Astatine is the rarest naturally-occurring element, with the total amount in Earth's crust estimated to be less than 1 oz (28 g) at any given time; this amounts to less than one teaspoon of the element. The Guinness Book of Records has dubbed the element the rarest on Earth, stating: "Only around 0.9 oz (25 g) of the element astatine (At) occurring naturally"; Isaac Asimov wrote a 1955 essay on large numbers, scientific notation, and the size of the atom, in which he stated that the number of astatine atoms on Earth at any time was "only a trillion".

History
The existence of "eka-iodine" had been predicted by Mendeleev. Astatine (after Greek astat?? astatos, meaning "unsteady") was first synthesized in 1940 by Dale R. Corson, K. R. MacKenzie, and Emilio Segrè at the University of California, Berkeley by barraging bismuth with alpha particles. An earlier name for the element was alabamine (Ab).

Occurrence
Astatine is produced by bombarding bismuth with energetic alpha particles to obtain relatively long-lived 209At - 211At, which can then be distilled from the target by heating in the presence of air.

Compounds
Multiple compounds of astatine have been synthesized in microscopic amounts and studied as intensively as possible before their inevitable radioactive disintegration. These compounds are primarily of theoretical interest; however, they are also being studied for potential use in nuclear medicine.

Isotopes
Astatine has 33 known isotopes, all of which are radioactive; the range of their mass numbers is from 191 to 223. There exist also 23 metastable excited states. The longest-lived isotope is 210At, which has a half-life of 8.1 hours; the shortest-lived known isotope is 213At, which has a half-life of 125 nanoseconds.


Boiling point
The boiling point of a substance is the temperature at which it can change its state from a liquid to a gas throughout the bulk of the liquid at a given pressure. A liquid may change to a gas at temperatures below the boiling point through the process of evaporation. Any change of state from a liquid to a gas at boiling point is considered vaporization. However, evaporation is a surface phenomenon, in which only molecules located near the gas/liquid surface could evaporate. Boiling on the other hand is a bulk process, so at the boiling point molecules anywhere in the liquid may be vaporized, resulting in the formation of vapor bubbles.
somewhat clearer (and perhaps more useful) definition of boiling point is "the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the pressure of the surroundings."

The reaction
Something that should be remembered is that boiling is evidenced by the appearance of bubbles containing vapor from the liquid. [Note: The bubbles that precede real boiling in the pot on the stove are either (formerly) dissolved gas or water vapor forming on the very hot bottom of the pot that will be condensed before it can get to the top of the liquid.] Production of vapor requires energy and thus does not occur without some source of energy. This source can be a hot surface or even the liquid itself. Hot liquid will boil as it rises through the bulk liquid if the pressure of the environment drops to the vapor pressure of the liquid at its temperature. This production of vapor will not quickly stop because the temperature of the liquid will not be reduced by the vaporization thus reducing the vapor pressure.

Saturation temperature and pressure
A saturated liquid or saturated vapor contains as much thermal energy as it can without boiling or condensing.
Saturation temperature means boiling point. The saturation temperature is the temperature for a corresponding saturation pressure at which a liquid boils into its vapor phase. The liquid can be said to be saturated with thermal energy. Any addition of thermal energy results in a phase change.
If the pressure in a system remains constant (isobaric), a vapor at saturation temperature will begin to condense into its liquid phase as thermal energy (heat) is removed. Similarly, a liquid at saturation temperature and pressure will boil into its vapor phase as additional thermal energy is applied.
The boiling point corresponds to the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the substance equals the ambient pressure. Thus the boiling point is dependent on the pressure. Usually, boiling points are published with respect to standard pressure (101.325 kilopascals or 1 atm). At higher elevations, where the atmospheric pressure is much lower, the boiling point is also lower. The boiling point increases with increased ambient pressure up to the critical point, where the gas and liquid properties become identical. The boiling point cannot be increased beyond the critical point. Likewise, the boiling point decreases with decreasing ambient pressure until the triple point is reached. The boiling point cannot be reduced below the triple point.
Saturation Pressure, or vapor point, is the pressure for a corresponding saturation temperature at which a liquid boils into its vapor phase. Saturation pressure and saturation temperature have a direct relationship: as saturation pressure is increased so is saturation temperature.
If the temperature in a system remains constant (an isothermal system), vapor at saturation pressure and temperature will begin to condense into its liquid phase as the system pressure is increased. Similarly, a liquid at saturation pressure and temperature will tend to flash into its vapor phase as system pressure is decreased.

Latent heat
The process of changing from a liquid to a gas requires an amount of heat called the latent heat of vaporization. As heat is added to a liquid at its boiling point, all of this heat goes toward the phase change from liquid to gas, thus the temperature of the substance remains constant even though heat has been added. The word latent, which comes from Latin and means hidden, is used to describe this "disappearing" heat that is added, but doesn't result in an increase in temperature. Since heat is added with no corresponding change in temperature, the heat capacity of the liquid is essentially infinite at the boiling point.

Intermolecular interactions
In terms of intermolecular interactions, the boiling point represents the point at which the liquid molecules possess enough heat energy to overcome the various intermolecular attractions binding the molecules into the liquid (eg. dipole-dipole attraction, instantaneous-dipole induced-dipole attractions, and hydrogen bonds). Therefore the boiling point is also an indicator of the strength of these attractive forces.
The boiling point of water is 100 °C (212 °F) at standard pressure. On top of Mount Everest the pressure is about 260 mbar (26 kPa) so the boiling point of water is 69 °C.
For purists with a knowledge of thermodynamics, the normal boiling point of water is 99.97 degrees Celsius (at a pressure of 1 atm, i.e. 101.325 kPa). Until 1982 this was also the standard boiling point of water, but the IUPAC now recommends a standard pressure of 1 bar (100 kPa). At this slightly reduced pressure, the standard boiling point of water is 99.61 degrees Celsius

Properties of other elements
The element with the lowest boiling point is helium. Both the boiling points of rhenium and tungsten exceed 5000 K at standard pressure. Due to the experimental difficulty of precisely measuring extreme temperatures without bias, there is some discrepancy in the literature as to whether tungsten or rhenium has the higher boiling point.

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