Their discoveries of caesium and rubidium marked a significant milestone in the development of spectroscopy, which is the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation. They concluded that this line was due to a new element, which they named caesium after the Latin word “caesius”, which means “sky-blue”.īunsen and Kirchhoff also discovered another alkali metal, rubidium, in the same year, using a similar technique. They were investigating the spectral lines of certain elements by heating them in a flame, and they noticed a bright blue line in the spectrum of mineral water from Bad Dürkheim, Germany. who discovered caesium?Ĭaesium was discovered by two German chemists, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff, in 1860. It has a long half-life, which means that it remains radioactive for a significant amount of time, and it can accumulate in living organisms and the environment. This changes the atomic number of the nucleus, converting the caesium-137 atom into a barium-137 atom.Ĭaesium-137 is a radioactive isotope that is produced as a byproduct of nuclear fission, and it can be a health hazard if it is released into the environment in large amounts. The decay of caesium-137 is a beta decay, where the nucleus of the atom emits a beta particle (an electron) and a neutrino, and one of its neutrons is converted into a proton. After another 30.17 years, half of the remaining amount will decay, and so on. This means that if you start with a certain amount of caesium-137, after 30.17 years, only half of that amount will remain. The half-life of caesium-137 is about 30.17 years. This single valence electron is loosely bound to the nucleus, which makes caesium highly reactive and easily able to lose its valence electron to form a positively charged ion, Cs+. In the case of caesium, its outermost shell is the sixth shell, and it contains only one electron in the 6s orbital. The valence electrons of an atom are the electrons in its outermost energy level or shell. The remaining electron in caesium occupies the 6s orbital.īy Jurii –, CC BY 3.0, Link caesium valence electronsĬaesium (Cs) has 1 valence electron. This can also be abbreviated as 6s^1, where represents the electron configuration of the noble gas xenon, whose electron configuration is complete up to its 5p orbital.
physical and chemical properties of caesium.
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