article_snippet.sent: Researchers have for the first time been able to test how much energy is required to strip an electron from an atom of the radioactive element lawrencium.
article_snippet.sent: Lawrencium, which was first discovered in 1961 by the nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence, is notoriously difficult to make and only  exists for a few seconds at a time.
article_snippet.sent: But now researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency have been able to create enough to measured the ionisation potential of lawrencium for the first time.
article_snippet.sent: Speaking to Chemistry world, Yuichiro Nagame, a researcher at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency who took part in the study, said: ‘[Lutetium and lawrencium]
article_snippet.sent: Lawrencium, represented by the diagram left, was discovered by nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence (right)
article_snippet.sent: Lawrencium was first generated by nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence (right) by bombarding californium atoms with boron atoms to create the new superheavy element.
article_snippet.sent: The new study, which is published in the journal Nature, used the same approach as nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence (right) to create the element that bears nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence (right) name but captured his name in a helium and cadmium iodide gas.
article_snippet.sent: This was passed through a heated tantalum surface giving the short-lived lawrencium enough energy to shed This outer electron - the ionisation potential.
article_snippet.sent: The researchers were able to study lawrencium for the first time using an ionizer cavity (left) which revealed that the element has one of the lowest ionisation potentials of any of the atoms in the f-block (right)
highlights_snippet.sent: The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has studied lawrencium for the first time .
  