Period 7 element

A period 7 element is one of the chemical elements in the seventh row (or period) of the periodic table of the chemical elements. The periodic table is laid out in rows to illustrate recurring (periodic) trends in the chemical behavior of the elements as their atomic number increases: a new row is begun when chemical behavior begins to repeat, meaning that elements with similar behavior fall into the same vertical columns. The seventh period contains 32 elements, tied for the most with period 6, beginning with francium and ending with oganesson, the heaviest element currently discovered. As a rule, period 7 elements fill their 7s shells first, then their 5f, 6d, and 7p shells in that order, but there are exceptions, such as uranium. All elements of period 7 are radioactive. This period contains the actinides, which includes plutonium, the naturally occurring element with the heaviest nucleus; subsequent elements must be created artificially. While the first five of these synthetic elements (americium through einsteinium) are now available in macroscopic quantities, most are extremely rare, having only been prepared in microgram amounts or less. The later transactinide elements have only been identified in laboratories in batches of a few atoms at a time. Although the rarity of many of these elements means that experimental results are not very extensive, their periodic and group trends are less well defined than other periods. Whilst francium and radium do show typical properties of their respective groups, actinides display a much greater variety of behavior and oxidation states than the lanthanides. These peculiarities are due to a variety of factors, including a large degree of spin–orbit coupling and relativistic effects, ultimately caused by the very high positive electrical charge from their massive atomic nuclei. Periodicity mostly holds throughout the 6d series, and is predicted also for moscovium and livermorium, but the other four 7p elements, nihonium, flerovium, tennessine, and oganesson, are predicted to have very different properties from those expected for their groups.

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Superheavy element

Superheavy elements, also known as transactinide elements, transactinides, or super-heavy elements, are the chemical elements with atomic number greater than 103. The superheavy elements are those beyond the actinides in the periodic table; the last actinide is lawrencium (atomic number 103). By definition, superheavy elements are also transuranium elements, i.e., having atomic numbers greater than that of uranium (92). Depending on the definition of group 3 adopted by authors, lawrencium may also be included to complete the 6d series.

Atomic radius

The atomic radius of a chemical element is a measure of the size of its atom, usually the mean or typical distance from the center of the nucleus to the outermost isolated electron. Since the boundary is not a well-defined physical entity, there are various non-equivalent definitions of atomic radius. Four widely used definitions of atomic radius are: Van der Waals radius, ionic radius, metallic radius and covalent radius.

Heavy metals

Heavy metals are generally defined as metals with relatively high densities, atomic weights, or atomic numbers. The criteria used, and whether metalloids are included, vary depending on the author and context. In metallurgy, for example, a heavy metal may be defined on the basis of density, whereas in physics the distinguishing criterion might be atomic number, while a chemist would likely be more concerned with chemical behaviour. More specific definitions have been published, none of which have been widely accepted.

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