Vial's Periodic Periodicals: Technetium (43)

Technetium
Atomic Number: 43
Atomic Weight: 98
Element Group:  Transition Metals
Phase at Room Temperature:  Solid


I didn't really want to write this 'cause I'm really uncomfortable telling other people about myself, but Vial persuaded me to do it anyway. You see, the Periodic Table is divided into two main sections; anything past Bismuth (83) is radioactive, and any element before it is stable. But I sit in the middle of some of the most stable, reliable elements, and yet I am radioactive. Yes, I am a synthetically produced, radioactive element that is not found in nature.


During the mid to late 1800s, scientists were searching for the element that occupied an empty spot on the Periodic Table; me. Many chemists were confused as they sifted through minerals containing my elemental neighbors while I remained undiscovered. This was because I don't occur naturally. Several times chemists claimed they had discovered me, but they were all wrong. Names suggested by these chemists were ilmenium, pelopium, davyum, lucium, nipponium and masurium. Finally, Emilio Serge discovered me in the aftermath of an experiment involving a cyclotron. His friend, Ernest Lawrence, mailed him some Molybdenum (42) foil used in the cyclotron after Serge persuaded him to do so. Serge found some of my illusive atoms in the foil, which had been created as a side-effect of an atomic bombardment.

 I get my name, technetium, from a Greek word for artificial.

Although my Periodic neighbors shun me for my out-of-place radioactivity, I am used frequently in the hospital. When a patient is suspected of having bone cancer, they are injected with a highly radioactive isotope of me. I immediately go to the bones in their body where I am detected and form an image which can show areas of recent bone growth. Because this isotope is so violently radioactive, nurses move me on carts lined with Lead (82) shields and push me along with a long handle.

Although this may startle patients who are about to be injected with a chemical their nurse is trying so hard to avoid, there is a reasonable explanation. You may only be injected and exposed to me once in your entire life, but nurses handle me every day and must avoid accumulating lethal doses of radiation.

So the next time you have bone cancer and need to be injected with a dangerous chemical, you can think of me.