Wednesday, March 1

Getting there

We flew from Atlanta to Paris and then boarded a little Airbus A319 to Moscow. The Oak Ridge team is also almost complete and will also be representing Tennessee. The photo you see [in the gallery] is right before landing at Szeremetevo Airport. All has gone rather smoothly so far.

The taxi driver will take us to Dubna which is north of Moscow and is a location of the JINR institute where the superheavy discoveries took place.

It is a cold late winter day with dirty snow on the roadside. The ride is about an hour and a half—60 miles or so. The landscape is like in Michigan or something I remember from where I grew up (in Poland).

Principal Martin McDonald and students from Oak Ridge High School accepted the first new chart of the periodic table featuring element tennessine and signed by Governor Bill Haslam and ORNL Director Thom Mason. To mark the discovery of tennessine, UT-Battelle is donating a new chart to all public middle and high schools in Tennessee. ORNL photo.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam visited the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory today to congratulate the team involved in the discovery of the element tennessine, named in recognition of the vital contributions of the state of Tennessee to the international search for new superheavy elements.

One of the newest members of the periodic table will likely have a familiar sound to it, even if the spelling might be a bit off: Tennessine.