Question: what is rutherfordium

Kathryn Boast answered on 5 Mar 2019:

Rutherfordium is a special chemical element. The “periodic table” (http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table) is where we list all the different chemical elements we know about, according to how their atoms look. Atoms are the building blocks of nature – like Lego bricks, they come in different shapes and sizes and colours, and you can’t break them without *lots* of energy, but you can use them to make up all kinds of different things. Each element has a slightly different-looking atom to every other element, and is made up of only that kind of atom. Iron is an element, and is made up of only iron-type atoms. Carbon is also an element, but steel (which is made of iron and carbon) is not – it’s made up of iron atoms and carbon atoms.
Rutherfordium is special because it doesn’t exist in nature, but scientists can make it in a laboratory. When they do, it only lasts for a couple of hours before it disintegrates and turns into something else! It’s named after the physicist Ernest Rutherford, who discovered that atoms are mostly empty space, with a lump of stuff (the nucleus) in the middle.