Megan Barton

The science hallway floor, redone in 2012, has updated electron configurations.

On Dec. 30, Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 were officially recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the US-based world authority on chemistry. This recognition completes the seventh row of the Periodic Table, but at the same time also makes tens of thousands of textbooks obsolete.

“The elements fit just fine in the same order, but will make the table out of date for schools which will make me buy new textbooks so they’re up to date,” science teacher Colleen O’Toole said.

In 2013, Swedish scientists confirmed the existence of the Russian-discovered Ununpentium (atomic number 115). As they described it, the element was produced by a shooting a beam of Calcium, which has 20 protons, into a thin film of Americium, which has 95 protons. For less than a second, the new element had 115 protons.

“The new chemical changes could be highly radioactive and decay faster,” O’Toole said.

IUPAC has started the process to formalize the names and symbols for these new elements. They have been given temporary names; Ununtrium, (Uut or element 113), Ununpentium (Uup, element 115), Ununseptium (Uus, element 117), and Ununoctium (Uuo, element 118).

“Some of the elements might have been exploded from star stuff that could have not been detected on earth. Might be even more than what we thought,” O’Toole said.

This new update follows the 2011 update when elements 114 Flerovium and 116 Livermorium were added. Now that the elements have been validated, permanent names have to be selected. IUPAC dictates that any new elements can be named after a mineral, a place, a myth or a scientist.

“[The new elements] should be named after scientists. I’d like to see Einsteinium, O’Tooleium or Degrassetysonium,” O’Toole said.