This week's element is francium, which has the symbol Fr and the atomic number 87. Francium is a highly radioactive alkali metal that is vanishingly rare in the wild. It is the most unstable naturally ...

Precise information about the magnetic properties of nuclei is critical for studies of what's known as the 'weak force.' While people do not feel this force in the same way they feel electricity or ...

There is about an ounce of francium in the Earth’s crust. It’s the most unstable of the first 101 elements. It lasts only 45 seconds longer than an episode of Archer. So how did anyone discover it?

When it comes to the periodic table, the United States really blew its chance to make a name for itself. If you look over a map of all the elements named for cities, states, countries, and continents, ...

The periodic table, which arranges elements based on chemical behavior and physical properties, is a triumph of science. Yet the first table, developed in the late 1860s, was riddled with gaps created ...

The periodic table contains more than a hundred chemical elements, the basic building blocks of the everything around us — living and non-living. The atomic number of an element is determined by how ...