ALCHEMY II --Turning Lead into Gold

Although the alchemists failed to find a method for the transmutation of base metals into precious metals, a number of important chemical processes resulted from their efforts.

For example,
1)Extraction of metals from ores,hence producing pure metal.
2) Producing a number of inorganic acids and bases that later became commercially important
3) Developing the techniques of fusion(penggabungan), calcination(pengapuran), solution(penyelesaian-cecair), filtration(penurasan), crystallization(penghabluran), sublimation(pemejalwapan), and, most importantly, distillation(penyulingan).

During the Middle Ages, they began to try to systematize the results of their primitive experiments and their fragments of information in order to explain or predict chemical reactions between substances. Thus the idea of chemical elements and the first primitive forms of the chemical Periodic Table(Jadual Berkala Unsur) appeared.

Why did they failed in transmutation?

The answer is each element has a different but fixed number of protons in the nucleus of the atom, which is the atomic number, the transmutation of one chemical element into another involves changing that number. Such a nuclear reaction requires millions of times more energy than was available through chemical reactions. Thus, the alchemist's dream of transmuting lead into gold was never chemically achievable.

Ironically, nuclear transmutations( transmutasi nuklear) were taking place virtually under the noses of the alchemists (or under their feet), but they had neither the methods to detect nor the knowledge to use these happenings. The discovery of the nuclear transmutation process was closely linked to the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896.

Nuclear transmutations occur during the spontaneous radioactive decay of naturally occurring thorium and uranium (atomic numbers 90 and 92, respectively) and the radioactive daughter products of their decay, namely the natural decay series.

Nuclear Transmutation occurs when a substance release:
1)α -particle (a He nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons)
2) emits a β -particle (an electron), which converts a neutron in the nucleus into a proton, raising the atomic number of the resultant nucleus by one with no change in atomic mass,
The sequence of successive α and β decays continues from one element to another until the stable nucleus is produced.

Lots of research had been done in transmutation until the bombarding(pembedilan) of nitrogen(N) with emitted α -particles being discovered.This discovery established the new fields of nuclear chemistry and radiochemistry and sparked their rapid growth.

With the development of nuclear reactors and charged particle accelerators (commonly referred to as "atom smashers") over the second half of the twentieth century, the transmutation of one element into another has become commonplace. In fact some two dozen synthetic elements with atomic numbers higher than naturally occurring uranium have been produced by nuclear transmutation reactions. Thus, in principle, it is possible to achieve the alchemist's dream of transmuting lead into gold, but the cost of production via nuclear transmutation reactions would far exceed the value of the gold.