cup, plastic
date: label: date made
content: 1970-04-23
notes: label: Description
content: This plastic champagne coupe has a paper decoration in the base that is inscribed with "105 | HILAC | Al Ghiorso * Matti Nurmia * Kari Eskola * Jim Harris * Pirkko Eskola | April 23, 1970." The cup was one of a set designed and decorated by nuclear scientist Albert Ghiorso (who loved to create doodles and art) for a party celebrating the discovery of element 105 at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, now known as the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Albert (Al) Ghiorso was the head of the discovery team that included three Finnish physicists (Matti Nurmia, Kari Eskola, and Pirkko Eskola) and one Berkeley nuclear chemist (James (Jim) Harris).
label: Description
content: Harris purified and prepared a californium-249 target that was placed in Berkeley's Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator (HILAC) and bombarded with nitrogen-15 ions. Ghiorso, Nurmia, and Kari Eskola, were responsible for setting up, modifying, and running the equipment that detected newly formed particles created by smashing the nitrogen ions into the californium target at the end of the accelerator's beamline. Pirkko Eskola analyzed the energy and half-life data from the particle detectors which was processed and stored on a PDP-9 computer.
label: Description
content: In a paper submitted to the Physical Review Letters on 17 April 1970, the team reported the discovery of an isotope of element 105 and suggested it be named hahnium, in honor of German chemist Otto Hahn. Their methods closely mirrored the team's previous discovery of element 104 in 1969, in which they used the same californium target but bombarded it with carbon-12 and carbon-13 ions.
label: Description
content: Another research group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, USSR, also claimed priority to the discovery of elements 104 and 105. Decades of controversy ensued. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) ruled that the two teams should share credit for the discoveries and set the name for 104 as rutherfordium, as suggested by the Berkeley group, and 105 was named dubnium, for the Russian group.
label: Description
content: Element 105 was the last element discovered with the HILAC at Berkeley, which was also used to create elements 102-104. It was later modified and upgraded to accelerate even heavier ions and became known as the Super HILAC (~1972), opening the doors to the creation of more superheavy elements. This upgrade was mirrored by the drink options at parties, Super HILAC punch was much stronger than the HILAC punch.
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Ghiorso A., Nurmia M., Harris J., Eskola K., and Eskola P., “Positive Identification of Two Alpha-Particle-Emitting Isotopes of Element 104,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 22, 1317 – Published 16 June 1969
label: Description
content: Ghiorso A., Nurmia M., Eskola K., Harris J., and Eskola P., “New Element Hahnium, Atomic Number 105”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 24, 1498 (1970) - Published 29 June 1970
label: Description
content: Personal communication (2019) with Matti Nurmia and Kari Eskola.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2019.0208.01
label: accession number
content: 2019.0208
label: catalog number
content: 2019.0208.001
objectType: label: Object Name
content: cup, plastic
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: paper (base; inside material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 cm x 8.5 cm; 4 11/32 in x 3 11/32 in