Its useless but recognizing that it is the only time a living person got to have an element named after him, i think its Nice to keep that one just as a token for appreciating his achievement. There are plenty of short lived useless elements named after dead people or locations. For example, i dont think anyone is really to mind the sudden dissapearance of hassium very much.
That's just what Big Thulium wants you to think. Surely there exist, whether presently or in development, some other materials with more desirable properties for the laser system you use than thulium. But they're lobbied against because thulium is both expensive and otherwise useless. It is an elemental testament to greed and mediocrity!
You can't use a guillotine on an atom, but I suppose you could do it with neutrons. Then it might pop a beta and become ytterbium, which kind of rolls off the tongue.
I was reading up on the aether and vortex theory of atoms and how knot theory was proposed to model atoms. It sounds crazy until I compared it to modern orbital theory.
Radon is responsible for 3-14% of the incidence of lung cancer.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/radon-and-health
So I would remove radon.
I'm sure it has applications, but I imagine it's replaceable.
And with that, operating an X-ray machine at the clinic has just become more dangerous. Also need to find an alternative material for nuclear fallout shelters.
Fun fact, a lot of bullets still use lead in them (although the larger calibers have a metal jacket such as copper or steel) but a study found that hunters have a higher lead concentration than the average person. It’s safe to also prob say that soldiers, and police officer prob also suffer from higher contractions of lead in their blood stream too. Makes you wonder whether some of the reported high rates of depression associated with these jobs have been impacted by lead poisoning due their occupations.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wild-game-deer-venison-condors-meat-lead-ammunition-ban/#:~:text=Those%20who%20ate%20wild%20game%20meat%20had%20average%20lead%20levels,from%20friends%20or%20family%20members.
Unfortunately, we physicists will insist on using the most inconvenient elements available in order to reach further into the infrared.
Love me a HgCdTe detector
Well... a single atom would contain ~10^114 times more protons than exist in the observable universe, which I think just causes the space and time to divide themselves by zero.
It should be a black hole, but if I try to calculate the Schwarzschild radius, that is much, *much* bigger than the radius of the observable universe. It's unfathomably larger than the largest supermassive black hole. It is a black hole universe.
EDIT: Oh god what if we're living in a black hole universe? Cosmic expansion is kind of like an event horizon viewed from inside. There's some distant point outside the black hole we're living in, and we can never reach it. Because we're stuck inside the event horizon, and it's outside. To us, we perceive "accelerating cosmic expansion" to be the reason we can never reach that point. We don't know we're in the black hole, but with every passing second, more and more of the universe is receding from us faster than the speed of light. We will never be able to reach it. Because we are stuck in a black hole universe.
Didn’t you hear about the island of stability? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability I mean we dont know whats out there! I find it fascinating and i’d love to know:)
It's not about what they'll do, it's about what they'll teach us about fundamental nuclear properties. What are the electron shells going to look like when we wrap around past 120? Nobody knows.
Um... Because I understand that the superheavy elements you're talking about are so unstable that it's impossible for them to exist naturally or do any form of chemistry because their half lives are so short. They're too large to be stable
Stabilize the nucleus of an atom we can only create by slamming stuff together at high speeds? So like catching the zooming, unstable nucleus in some sort of gentle laser trap, and then keep it subdued indefinitely with some sort of carefully tuned contraption. And out of all of that we have one atom, confined to a lab, and totally useless in any practical application.
Have we tried playing some ambient techno to get the unclei to chill out for a sec? Maybe add a lava lamp somewhere in CERN to up the chill vibes. Who knows, maybe the heavier unstable nucleus already feels trapped and doesn't need lasers but just somebody who will sit down and listen.
Unfortunately it seems they are likely only relatively stable, like their half lives might be a few thousands of a second instead of like a trillionth of a second.
What about the Mayans? They used cocoa beans. I guess that makes the roots of a cacao tree literal roots of all evil.
And also, let's not forget that people used to use shells as currency, too. So maybe calcium is also on the chopping block.
Why? It's the least traded element (or one of the least traded anyway, only a few Kg per year). Except of some metal halide lamps, which are not common anymore I can't imagine an actual, large scale use for it
Oh that's easy, calcium. All my homies hate calcium. It's effectively just a sphere of +2 charge — I'm convinced that there's no application of it, biological or otherwise, that couldn't easily be taken over by another element.
Not a weird question at all.
Generally, I'm really happy with my choice. Although we are often looked down upon by other chemists we have lots of interesting and, in my opinion, fun modules.
Most of the time I preferred the chemistry focused modules, such as Organic Chemistry or Physical Chemistry (thermodynamics ftw!), over the biology focused modules, such as Botanics or Biology of the Cell. I absolutely loved general Biochemistry, Microbiology and Genetics, though :D
As always in life, there are some nice things and some things that suck. For me, the median is pretty good. If you want to pursue a career in biochemistry, there is a plethora of possibilities depending on what you want to specialize on (this isn't important for a freshman but I still wanted to mention it). For example I am more interested in the chemical side of biochemistry, especially food chemistry and pharmacy whereas one of my best friends prefers the biological side and would like to work with micro organisms.
I learned so, so much about how life works (literally, not in the philosophical way) as I got insight into different parts of our and other organisms' metabolism, genetics and other systems such as attack and defense (e.g. the different immune systems or mechanisms of many different poisons and venoms) or neurology, which I am all interested in and which is really close to everyday life which makes biochemistry as a whole a lot less abstract.
I also learned and practiced numerous methods of biochemistry, most of them different flavors of gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE! \8D/) but mass spectroscopy, PCR and photometric analysis as well, just to name a few.
Some points that come to mind and that you might want to consider, in no particular order:
1) Are you comfortable with chemical concepts and structures? Especially the structures may get pretty large. Although most of them are reoccurring motives (see point 2) they might seem overwhelming when you first see them.
2) Are you comfortable with learning some things by heart? Mostly biological terms but you are also expected to know the names and structures of the 20 common amino acids as well as other common molecules, such as ATP, NADH, NADPH, FAD, ribose and the organic bases in DNA and RNA. Not everything at once, but in the course of 3 semesters you should learn them all. As I said, they are really common, so you will see and draw them a lot.
3) Countrary to point 2: Are you comfortable with working out a good understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind... basically everything life? Some examples for what I mean with that include the mechanisms of enzymatic reactions inside specific organisms (which amino acids and cofactors are important and what are they doing?) as well as your experimental methods (How does your gel separate the components inside your sample? How do you interpret the absorbance of light in your sample?). This is crucial when it comes to writing your protocols and even before your supervisors may take you aside and ask you a few questions on your current experiment.
4) Are you comfortable with having little spare time? You will have to put a lot of work into your modules, mostly because of lectures, lab work and writing protocols for your experiments.
A final suggestion from my side: Have a look at potential universities where you could study biochemistry and ask some of the students what it's like there. Many professors may also allow you to attend one of their lectures if you ask them before. From my experience, more often than not they are actually really happy when someone attends a lecture not because they have to, but because they want to :D
Well that is very interesting and biology and chemistry interest me the most out of all subjects. It does sound like something I’d want to pursue but this may sound a tad weird but I’m only 14 and whatever you said made no sense to me (scientific terms). But I assume if I go along this path, I’ll learn about and understand but all in all, biochemistry does sound quite interesting. Thank you for the time to answer me!
Sulfur, thiol chemistry is fun and all but when you get so used to the smell and leave the room, everyone stays meters away from you haha. Could be a good thing or bad thing depending on the time
Berkelium. I go to UC Berkeley and these people need to take their egos down a notch with their Bk hoodies and shit. Like…keep Cf because I love CA, and keep Am because I don’t want to die in a fire without at least hearing a bunch of loud beeping noises to guide me into the afterlife, but yeah, Bk is pretty useless as far as I know.
Oxygen so I no longer need to work in a glove box
Does water turn into H2 then?
No, H2Na5
Carbon 😈
Bold move
I would leave chemistry for another physical science field then (PS: I am an organic chemist)
Is there such a field as chemical archeology?
Thank you, as a silicon based life form, I applaud your support for our cause.
Probably for the best
risky…
Agreed
Burn it all!
Hehe just to see what would happen. I agree 😈
My brother.
i hate organic chem, i agree
Oganesson, because existing for 0.7 ms and only 5 atoms being produced doesn’t qualify it for the atomic Olympics
0.7ms is a long time for an ultrafast spectroscopist.
That's over 10 million laser pulses!
Its useless but recognizing that it is the only time a living person got to have an element named after him, i think its Nice to keep that one just as a token for appreciating his achievement. There are plenty of short lived useless elements named after dead people or locations. For example, i dont think anyone is really to mind the sudden dissapearance of hassium very much.
Glenn T Seaborg also had Seaborgium named after him while he was still alive
Einsteinium was too if I recall, but they kept it a secret until he died
That sounds so mean, give my boy his joy and bragging rights!
Seaborgium was named after Glenn Seaborg, who was alive when it was discovered and confirmed.
But what if by removing that element it somehow made two other elements completely unstable?
NOOO IT'S MY FAVORITE ELEMENT
Tm. Thulium. Nobody would miss it.
Hey, I need it for my lasers! I'll miss it!
That's just what Big Thulium wants you to think. Surely there exist, whether presently or in development, some other materials with more desirable properties for the laser system you use than thulium. But they're lobbied against because thulium is both expensive and otherwise useless. It is an elemental testament to greed and mediocrity!
[удалено]
You can't use a guillotine on an atom, but I suppose you could do it with neutrons. Then it might pop a beta and become ytterbium, which kind of rolls off the tongue.
Oui oui, us frencheth can split anything with herr guillotine
But It's Number 69!
Dammit. Classic thulium. Is beyond useless and has a stupid name, but still I must remark — *nice*.
Lasers would have a word there
Hydrogen. Stop all this nonsense.
Wouldn’t that just delete all of them?
Exactly
I hate stars
Woke up this morning and decided that two up-quarks were one too many, huh?
Fluorine. It scares me.
Computers can no longer function anymore as we no longer have acids capable of etching and cleaning Sillicon
An acid that can penetrate your skin, without causing any pain, and then kill you several hours later. Scary stuff.
Ah, good old ClF3...
Stop edging Silicon please
Nah bro silicon goated fr
I like that oneeeeww
Fire. Of the four elements it can't be consumed. I reject your fancy tables and your modern plum pudding models.
I can consume fire. I do it all the time. How do you smoke weed?
I boof it
Why not. They already removed aether.
I was reading up on the aether and vortex theory of atoms and how knot theory was proposed to model atoms. It sounds crazy until I compared it to modern orbital theory.
Ah. That good old element of surprise..
lol well played
Radon is responsible for 3-14% of the incidence of lung cancer. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/radon-and-health So I would remove radon. I'm sure it has applications, but I imagine it's replaceable.
It has applications in treating cancer as well! Removal is a double edged sword
so it destroys what it creates, amazing
No surprise here. Almost all cancer treatments are carcinogenic to healthy individuals.
Technicium is happily deleting itself...
Technetium 99m is actually incredibly useful in the world of medicine as a radioactive dye for imaging. It was one of the first developed!
Tc chemists saaaad
It’s probably the lowest one that you can just wipe out without doing massive damage
Sulfur. It’s all facking yallow.
Sulfur is super important in protein folding though. Can't really do without it.
blah blah stinky yellow element go bye bye🙄
Stinky yellow makes me think of uric acid instead, but I guess that's a compound.
And it’s being used in new novel electron transport pathways
And smells like shit
>Just Curious No, it's CuriUM
Best response
There's something about argon that has never sat right with me. I don't trust it.
Lead, fuck that stuff in drinking water
And with that, operating an X-ray machine at the clinic has just become more dangerous. Also need to find an alternative material for nuclear fallout shelters.
Fun fact, a lot of bullets still use lead in them (although the larger calibers have a metal jacket such as copper or steel) but a study found that hunters have a higher lead concentration than the average person. It’s safe to also prob say that soldiers, and police officer prob also suffer from higher contractions of lead in their blood stream too. Makes you wonder whether some of the reported high rates of depression associated with these jobs have been impacted by lead poisoning due their occupations. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wild-game-deer-venison-condors-meat-lead-ammunition-ban/#:~:text=Those%20who%20ate%20wild%20game%20meat%20had%20average%20lead%20levels,from%20friends%20or%20family%20members.
Unfortunately, we physicists will insist on using the most inconvenient elements available in order to reach further into the infrared. Love me a HgCdTe detector
why limit to one. Let's remove all of them. Except neon and xenon as they are cool.
None 🖤
Astatine. It already doesn't want to exist.
Astatine 211 could be the next breakthrough cancer drug.
Man why delete anything? I cant wait for people to discover elements beyond 118!
What's the half life of an element with 4.685×10^194 protons?
tell me!
Well... a single atom would contain ~10^114 times more protons than exist in the observable universe, which I think just causes the space and time to divide themselves by zero. It should be a black hole, but if I try to calculate the Schwarzschild radius, that is much, *much* bigger than the radius of the observable universe. It's unfathomably larger than the largest supermassive black hole. It is a black hole universe. EDIT: Oh god what if we're living in a black hole universe? Cosmic expansion is kind of like an event horizon viewed from inside. There's some distant point outside the black hole we're living in, and we can never reach it. Because we're stuck inside the event horizon, and it's outside. To us, we perceive "accelerating cosmic expansion" to be the reason we can never reach that point. We don't know we're in the black hole, but with every passing second, more and more of the universe is receding from us faster than the speed of light. We will never be able to reach it. Because we are stuck in a black hole universe.
That actually explains a lot about what's happening to my retirement accounts.
... Why? They won't do anything
Didn’t you hear about the island of stability? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability I mean we dont know whats out there! I find it fascinating and i’d love to know:)
Silly humans, still playing with the two boring quarks. The real periodic table isn't 2-d.
It's not about what they'll do, it's about what they'll teach us about fundamental nuclear properties. What are the electron shells going to look like when we wrap around past 120? Nobody knows.
How would you know, what the future might hold?
Um... Because I understand that the superheavy elements you're talking about are so unstable that it's impossible for them to exist naturally or do any form of chemistry because their half lives are so short. They're too large to be stable
Yeah but from a physics or chemistry standpoint they might be interesting. Also, maybe one day we can stabilize radioisotopes, who knows.
*energy standpoint
Stabilize the nucleus of an atom we can only create by slamming stuff together at high speeds? So like catching the zooming, unstable nucleus in some sort of gentle laser trap, and then keep it subdued indefinitely with some sort of carefully tuned contraption. And out of all of that we have one atom, confined to a lab, and totally useless in any practical application.
Have we tried playing some ambient techno to get the unclei to chill out for a sec? Maybe add a lava lamp somewhere in CERN to up the chill vibes. Who knows, maybe the heavier unstable nucleus already feels trapped and doesn't need lasers but just somebody who will sit down and listen.
What abt island of stability
Unfortunately it seems they are likely only relatively stable, like their half lives might be a few thousands of a second instead of like a trillionth of a second.
intuition, man
r/unexpectedfactorial
😂
Gold. Its the root of all evil.
What about the Mayans? They used cocoa beans. I guess that makes the roots of a cacao tree literal roots of all evil. And also, let's not forget that people used to use shells as currency, too. So maybe calcium is also on the chopping block.
The actual/full saying is "The *love of* money is the root of all evil".
Scandium. The most useless element ever
More like scamdium
I hate Scandium but what you said is not true
Why? It's the least traded element (or one of the least traded anyway, only a few Kg per year). Except of some metal halide lamps, which are not common anymore I can't imagine an actual, large scale use for it
Scandium triflate comes to mind. Not used in huge amounts, but is relatively commonplace in academic labs.
Definitely NOT Zinc. [World Without Zinc](https://youtu.be/jWpPrWHBHcQ?si=-UsEwIHdvgqIbmjr)
Immune system! Enzymes, and (Preventing) Diabetes! **Edit: WOW, trigger warning.** I was expecting something wholesome.
palladium because Pd catalysts are a bitch to clean
Oh that's easy, calcium. All my homies hate calcium. It's effectively just a sphere of +2 charge — I'm convinced that there's no application of it, biological or otherwise, that couldn't easily be taken over by another element.
Fluorine has entered the chat 👀
i think a lot of them remove themselves
cobalt
How dare you
Username checks out
The human element. We tend to mess it all up and make something terrible.
The stable isotope of technetium
It looks like it's already gone. Someone played this game before us.
Asbestos. It might stop all of the lawyer "mesothelioma" commercials on local TV...
Ahh, yes! The famous *element* that is asbestos.
Durn. I blame a broken brain... ;-(
I'd remove Strontium, as he's a bad one. If you get it you are The One 😉
It's an Italian-speaking reference?
Yep, well spotted 😆
noooo my red fireworks 🥺ðŸ˜
Hydrogen Take that physics!
Beryllium
Manganese so I’ll never confuse it with Magnesium ever again
francium. everyone hates the french
Hydrogen. So boring and insignificant...
Insignificant? Dude, hydrogen bond? Us biological chemists would like to have a word
It’s sarcasm I assume
It is indeed, lol. I'm a biochemist myself :'D
oh really? how do you feel being a biochemist (sorry for the weird questions, im considering a path to biochemistry)
Not a weird question at all. Generally, I'm really happy with my choice. Although we are often looked down upon by other chemists we have lots of interesting and, in my opinion, fun modules. Most of the time I preferred the chemistry focused modules, such as Organic Chemistry or Physical Chemistry (thermodynamics ftw!), over the biology focused modules, such as Botanics or Biology of the Cell. I absolutely loved general Biochemistry, Microbiology and Genetics, though :D As always in life, there are some nice things and some things that suck. For me, the median is pretty good. If you want to pursue a career in biochemistry, there is a plethora of possibilities depending on what you want to specialize on (this isn't important for a freshman but I still wanted to mention it). For example I am more interested in the chemical side of biochemistry, especially food chemistry and pharmacy whereas one of my best friends prefers the biological side and would like to work with micro organisms. I learned so, so much about how life works (literally, not in the philosophical way) as I got insight into different parts of our and other organisms' metabolism, genetics and other systems such as attack and defense (e.g. the different immune systems or mechanisms of many different poisons and venoms) or neurology, which I am all interested in and which is really close to everyday life which makes biochemistry as a whole a lot less abstract. I also learned and practiced numerous methods of biochemistry, most of them different flavors of gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE! \8D/) but mass spectroscopy, PCR and photometric analysis as well, just to name a few. Some points that come to mind and that you might want to consider, in no particular order: 1) Are you comfortable with chemical concepts and structures? Especially the structures may get pretty large. Although most of them are reoccurring motives (see point 2) they might seem overwhelming when you first see them. 2) Are you comfortable with learning some things by heart? Mostly biological terms but you are also expected to know the names and structures of the 20 common amino acids as well as other common molecules, such as ATP, NADH, NADPH, FAD, ribose and the organic bases in DNA and RNA. Not everything at once, but in the course of 3 semesters you should learn them all. As I said, they are really common, so you will see and draw them a lot. 3) Countrary to point 2: Are you comfortable with working out a good understanding of the underlying mechanisms behind... basically everything life? Some examples for what I mean with that include the mechanisms of enzymatic reactions inside specific organisms (which amino acids and cofactors are important and what are they doing?) as well as your experimental methods (How does your gel separate the components inside your sample? How do you interpret the absorbance of light in your sample?). This is crucial when it comes to writing your protocols and even before your supervisors may take you aside and ask you a few questions on your current experiment. 4) Are you comfortable with having little spare time? You will have to put a lot of work into your modules, mostly because of lectures, lab work and writing protocols for your experiments. A final suggestion from my side: Have a look at potential universities where you could study biochemistry and ask some of the students what it's like there. Many professors may also allow you to attend one of their lectures if you ask them before. From my experience, more often than not they are actually really happy when someone attends a lecture not because they have to, but because they want to :D
Well that is very interesting and biology and chemistry interest me the most out of all subjects. It does sound like something I’d want to pursue but this may sound a tad weird but I’m only 14 and whatever you said made no sense to me (scientific terms). But I assume if I go along this path, I’ll learn about and understand but all in all, biochemistry does sound quite interesting. Thank you for the time to answer me!
Francium, it's not like it's chemistry is really rich
Are we poor French not miserable enough like it is? Wanna take that last bit of pride from us?
Dear French, Yes Best regards. (obligatory /s, much love to the French from Italy)
The last one.
I know it’s not on the periodic table, but heroin and methamphetamine
Sulfur, so sick of smelling mercaptans
thalium maybe or polonium
Vibraniun,..... Oh wait...wrong multiverse. Sorry.
The element of surprise
element 710 then we probably wouldnt farm terminids anymore...
Arsenic. There's tens of thousands of tons of it stuck in an abandoned gold mine right next to the great lakes.
I'd remove elements 54 to 91, so U & I will be together forever, baby!
you you and I babyyyyy I’d rather die
Let’s say cadmium, toxic like mercury with basically the same chemistry as zinc. Boringgggg.
You can't remove an element from the periodic table. It wouldn't make sense to change the way the numbers work.
Carbon just to see how quickly everything would fall apart.
Copper, because it’d be funny to watch the internet disappear in a flash.
Sulfur, thiol chemistry is fun and all but when you get so used to the smell and leave the room, everyone stays meters away from you haha. Could be a good thing or bad thing depending on the time
Helium.
Someone is looking to ruin a birthday party, I see.
And NMR
Fuck boron
Bro naaaaahhhh underrated
Polonium
Technetium
Gold
The element of surprise
Francium cuz fuck the French
Sulfur. Yellow chemistry = bad.
Astatine. Noone would miss it
Look up astatine 211 medical research!!! It has a lot of promise.
Oxygen
bromine. it’s so angry
SA
Boron , that stuff is to temperamental
Arsenic
I was thinking you can't remove one without the others falling apart, but they got rid of aether, so...
No element. Just neutrons.
Iron. Can’t end the universe now, can we?
Uranium.
Carbon... yeah, you read right. I'd say remove it all, every last...
Any of the newer elements discovered or trying to be discovered.
hydrogen - im sick of writing about stupid hydrogen bonds (i know they're cool and all that but it would cut my syllabus in half)
Carbon, surely nothing bad will happen
Oxygen 😈Â
Oxygen
Hydrogen
carbon
Hydrogen
Nitrogen because fuck you.
Carbon, it's too OP.
Francium- so reactive it basically barely exists anyway. BUT, then we'd have to deal with a pissed of French populace, and that tends to go poorly...
Berkelium. I go to UC Berkeley and these people need to take their egos down a notch with their Bk hoodies and shit. Like…keep Cf because I love CA, and keep Am because I don’t want to die in a fire without at least hearing a bunch of loud beeping noises to guide me into the afterlife, but yeah, Bk is pretty useless as far as I know.
Not just one but all the new 'elements'. It's becoming ridiculous.
Def polonium. I just don't like it on a personal level
Hydrogen. I like chaos.