CHEMISTRY GLOSSARY

lanthanides    →   lantanoidi

Lanthanides (lanthanons, lanthanoids or rare-earth elements) are a series of fourteen elements in the periodic table, generally considered to range in proton number from cerium to lutetium inclusive. It was convenient to divide these elements into the cerium group or light earth: cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu); and the yttrium group or heavy earths: gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb) i lutetium (Lu). The position of lanthanum is somewhat equivocal and, although not itself a lanthanide, it is often included with them for comparative purpose. The lanthanides are sometimes simply called the rare earths. Apart from unstable Pm, the lanthanides are actually not rare. Cerium is the 26. most abundant of all elements, 5 times as abundant as Pb. All are silvery very reactive metals.

meson    →   mezon

Meson is a positively or negatively charged subatomic particle of very short life age with a mass about 200 times greater than the one of electron. It is produced artificially in particle accelerators.

mineral water    →   mineralna voda

Mineral water is a groundwater that rises to the surface through a natural opening in the earth or rock and contains a relatively high concentration of mineral ions and trace of elements which can be radioactive or thermal.

neptunium    →   neptunij

Neptunium was discovered by Edwin M. McMillan and P. H. Abelson (USA) in 1940. Named after the planet Neptune. It is rare, silvery radioactive metal. Resists alkalis; reacts with oxygen and acids. Attacked by steam. Radiotoxic. Neptunium was produced by bombarding uranium with slow neutrons.

lawrencium    →   lawrencij

Lawrencium was discovered by Albert Ghiorso, Torbjorn Sikkeland, Almon E. Larsh and Robert M. Latimer (USA) in 1961. Named in honour of Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron. It is synthetic radioactive metal. Lawrencium was produced by bombarding a mixture of three isotopes of californium with boron-10 and boron-11 ions. Eight isotopes of lawrencium have been synthesized to date, with the longest-lived being lawrencium-256, which has a half-life of about 30 seconds.

mole    →   mol

Mole (mol) is the SI base unit of amount of substance.

The mole is the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kg of carbon 12.

When the mole is used, the elementary entities must be specified and may be atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, other particles, or specified groups of such particles. In this definition, it is understood that the carbon 12 atoms are unbound, at rest and in their ground state.

neutron    →   neutron

Neutron is an elementary particle on spin 1/2 and zero charge. The free neutron has an average lifetime of 887 seconds. Neutrons and protons, which are collectively called nucleons, are the constituents of the nucleus.

neutron number    →   neutronski broj

Neutron number (N) is a characteristic property of a specific isotope of an element, equal to the number of neutrons in the nucleus.

nitrate    →   nitrat

Nitrates are all compounds containing radical NO₃^- or any compound containing it, as a salt or ester of nitric acid. Fertilizers consist of sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate.

nitro colour    →   nitrobojilo

Nitro colours are artificial organic colours that contain nitro-group. They are used for colouring skin, wool and silk.