“I ask you,” the email to C&EN read, “is astatine more like a halogen or like a metal? This question awakens the inorganic chemist in everyone.” Whether or not you feel the same enthusiasm as the ...

Studying the infinitesimally rare element astatine can feel like chasing shadows. All of its isotopes are radioactive, the most stable having a half-life of 8 hours, and the estimated stock of ...

Halogen heaters contain a heating lamp and a bulb and are incorporated with a halogen element. Its lamp contains halogen gas, which heats up the lamp and it eventually glows to give you a warm and ...

I was looking at the periodic table of the elements the other day, as one does, when my eye fell upon the right-hand side of the chart. Right next to the noble gases at the extreme edge of the table ...

Excerpted from A Tale of 7 Elements, by Eric Scerri. Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press, June 2013. The story surrounding element 85 is one of the most complex and interesting among ...