Topographical representation of the periodic system with regard to nuclear stability with "real-world" examples

In a topographical representation of the periodic table with respect to nuclear stability (continent - sea - islands) and, as a consequence of this, to abundance (deserts -oases), the closest you can get with a real-world example is the following one:

Hydrogen would be situated at the far east of the Eurasian continent. From there, a line is drawn all the way towards Cap Griz Nez, at the strait of Dover in France.  Relatively large watermasses in the middle of the Eurasian continent like Lake Baikal and the Caspian Sea could be seen as representing the two gaps technetium and promethium. Cape Griz Nez at the strait of Dover in France would be the equivalent of bismuth on the periodic table, at the shore of the "sea of instability".  But the latter is now known to be unstable.  Bismuth's most abundant isotope Bi-209 has a half-life in excess of a billion times the age of the universe.  So if you would actually put that into perspective topographically, bismuth would be situated between the ebb and floodline of a protruding flat beach where the water at high tide doesn't rise above a picometre, which is much smaller than the size of a water-molecule.  At first sight, it might look as if the strait of Dover should have been far more broad than it is to fit this comparison, but if one enters the abundance of the elements between bismuth and thorium into the equation, the comparison might stand or would even be grotesquely underestimated.  The landmasses of the British Isles, Great Britain, the isle of Man and Ireland could be regarded as representing the only three significant "islands of stability": Th-232, U-235 and U-238. Great Britain represent thorium (proportionately, the island should be three times the size of Ireland in order to match the comparison), the Isle of Man represents U-235, much less abundant than the other two because of its much shorter half-life and the smaller Ireland compares to the more unstable and less abundant uranium. And ultimately, we end up with the last traces of primordial Pu-244, which due to its 80-million-year half-life just managed to survive the five gigayears of geological time only to narrowly fail to defy detection.  Plutonium's situation on the periodic table is comparable to that of Rockall, a small, uninhabited, remote rocky islet in the North Atlantic Ocean, which has become the geographical epiteth of "remoteness" and "isolation". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockall

The main periodic table ends at bismuth, by geographical analogy, at the shore edge of a continent; a continental shelf continues however, with shallows beginning at radium that rapidly drop off again after californium, with significant islands at thorium and uranium, as well as minor ones at e.g. plutonium, all of which is surrounded by a "sea of instability", which renders such elements as astatine, radon, and francium extremely short-lived relative to all but the heaviest elements found so far. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability )

As for terminology, some interesting Icelandic names for these outlying elements can be derived from this topographical comparison:

Thorium: eyblý (island-lead). This reason I used "ey-" or "eyju-" as the the first part of a compound name for thorium is twofold: firstly, it is founded upon the fact that the element was discovered in a sample, originating from the Norwegian island Løvøy (Icel. Laufey, "leaves' island"), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B8v%C3%B8ya,_Telemark and secondly and maybe more importantly, the fact of thorium being the most stable and consequently most abundant element of the two only islands of nuclear stability beyond lead and bismuth: thorium = eyblý (island lead) and uranium, úteyjublý ("outer-island lead", úteyja (outer island) + blý (lead)).

uranium: úteyjablý (The first part úteyja means " of the outer islands (of stability)" (U-235 and U-238). The second part -blý incdicates its position after lead and also the fact that after a long time the element will finally turn to "lead".
The first part in "úteyja-", út (outer, outlying), refers to the fact that the predominant uranium isotopes U-235 and U-238, represent the last significant "isotopal islands" of stability.

Plutonium: útskersblý (útsker ("outer rock in the sea", like Rockall or Kolbeinsey respectively off the Irish and Icelandic coast) + blý ("lead", situates the element after lead and points to its ultimate destiny). Plutonium constitutes the last outpost of the naturally occuring elements due to the relatively long half-life (80 million years) of its most stable isotope Pu-244, which ultimately ends up as the lead isotope Pb-207.

Actinides (þórbirklingar - thorberkelians)

The first element in þórbirklingar (lit. thorberkelians), þór- refers to Thorium, the most abundant of the actinides, being three times more abundant than uranium.
"Þór-" as a first element in a collective name for the actinides refers to the first naturally occuring actinides. The transuranium actinides, from Neptunium to lawrencium were all discovered in the Berkeley labs. It was to be discovered later that the primordial plutonium-isotope Pu-244 existed in nature but only to be found in amounts that barely defy detection. The long-lived isotopes of the lightest transplutonium elements didn't manage to survive the onslaught of 5 gigayears of geological time and were all synthesized at Berkeley. The college was named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley (Icel. Gyrgir Birkiló), who's surname is derived from a place-name  meaning "birch-clearing".  This toponym can easily be translated into Icelandic: Birkiló (-ló as in Osló), from which birkil- can be used in constructions like birkilefni.
(compare Berkeley / berkel-ium) or nýbirkilefni, nýbirkli (neoberkelium, californium), maríubirkli ("Mary's berkelium", curium). See the article on the radioactive elements under Berkelium: http://lotukerfi.blogspot.be/2012/08/polonium-mariubly-pulinamalmur-ok-that.html
From Birkil- the collective noun birklingar can be derived, representing the transplutonium elements.  The prefix þór- as a first element followed by -birklingar symbolizes the combination of the natural and synthesized elements that make up the actinide series: þórbirklingar, which would sound like "Thorberkelians" in English).  The name looks like a typically Old Icelandic collective family name, as if it is derived from "Bjarki Þór". 
It is important to note is that even if the existing names of the two key-elements were used: þórín instead of my þórblý and berkelín instead of my birkilefni, birkli, the construction þórbirklingar (thorberkelians) would still be valid: There's no reason why þór- as a derivation of þórín would be unacceptable as a positioning marker for elements near thorium, while berkel- in berkelín undergoes an i-shift and becomes birklingar when the collective surname ending -ingar is added.
Note also the position of Thorium (dark red) as the second element of the first 7 actinides (rosy-red), while berkelium (dark green), the element that was explicitely named after the place where the heavier actinides (pale green) were synthesized, is the second element of the second half of the group, right after the central actinide, curium. Both thorium and berkelium have, because of this position, tetravalent oxidation states.

It's a nice feeling to find out that this particular group of elements, the most members of which were discovered only as late as the so-called "nuclear era", can actually be designated by a purely Icelandic name constructed similarily to an Old Norse collective family name (e.g. Þorbirningar (descendants of Þorbjörn)). In Icelandic, nothing is untranslatable!

The term "transactinide" translates as handan þórbirklinganna (beyond the thorberkelians) or handan lafransblýs (lit. "beyond lawrence-lead", translawrencium). 

 

Þórbirklingar eru þyngri bræður eða systur leyndarmálma eða lotujarðmálma:

þórál eða hnossarblý (Ac), þórefni eða norðblý (Th) og bikþórefni, or biknorðblý (Th-230, Ionium), freyjublý (Pa), úteyjablý, fenrisblý, þórþungsteinn eða bikmálmur (U), eldþjófsblý, þeifsblý eða ægisefni (Np), heljarblý, kjarnagull, útskersblý, flokinmálmur eða sjögervismálmur (Pu), nýheimsblý (Am), maríubirkli, miðbirkli (Cm), birkli eða birkilefni (Bk), nýbirkli, nýbirkilefni eða hraðalsgull (Cf), eyjarbirkilefni eða styttri eybirkli, albirti eða hólmblý (Es), birklund, einreksblý (Fm), tílisblý (Md), nýbýlisblý birklingakelki eða elfráðsbirkli (No) og loksins lafransblý, lúskabirkli (lutetian berkelium) eða lokaþórbirklingur.

 

(1) For fundur in the meaning of "fifteen men" see: http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Sk%C3%A1ldskaparm%C3%A1l ( under 82. hópaheiti)



tvöfrafernd (double magic foursome, alpha particle)

A name for the alpha particle could be fjóreind, fereind or even simply fernd in the same fashion as tvennd was mentioned in the additional meaning of "deuteron" (heavy-water hydrogen nucleus) (Arngrímur Sigurðsson, Íslensk orðabók til að hafa við höndina).
But there's a better one: tvöfrafernd, consisting of tvöfra- (double magic, a contraction of tvö- and töfra- (magic) and fernd (foursome). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(physics)
The term tvöfrungur (double magic one, a magic nucleus) can be used to designate "alpha-radiation" since the other magic nuclei oxygen-16 (16O), calcium-40 (40Ca), calcium-48 (48Ca), nickel-48 (48Ni) and lead-208 (208Pb) don't form a "type of radiation".  "Alfageislun" could become more purely icelandic "tvöfrungageislun",  "ferndagaislun", tvennageislun (tvenna- is the genitive plural of tvennur and stands for "of two pair", which indicates the two protons and two neutrons in the alpha particle).

alpha particle: fereind, fjóreind, emblukjarni (helium is the femine part, the "embla" (first woman in Scandinavian mythology) of the two original gases because it is the central element in the most important nucleosynthesis processes, it is a mother-element. The chemically vigourous hydrogen could be viewed as "askur"), tvöfrafernd, tvöfratvennur.

alpha radiation: tvöfrungageislun (radiation of the double magic particle, which can here only refer to alpha-radiation, there is no O-16 or Ca-48 radiation), ferndageislun (radiation of foursomes),
The oxygen-burning process is the last nuclear reaction in the star's core which does not proceed via the alpha process.

triple-alpha process (formation of carbon-12 by 3 alpha particles): þvöfrungaþreföldun, þrjálfun (þrí + alfa = þrjálfa (verb denoting the fusion of three alfa particles, þrja- is not one of the declension forms of þrír so it sounds akward an unnatural and for that reason I umlauted the "a": þrjálfa, the noun derivation of which is þrjálfun)

helium-3:
1) þrjórloft (þrjór- from þrí- (refering amount of nuclons) + fjór- (four, the amount of nucleons in normal, much more abundant He-4.  This contraction of two numeral derivations is an Icelandic answer to the alternatively used term "trialphium", tri- (three) + alpha-particle (which consists of four nucleons + -ium (suffix denoting chemical elements).  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
2) valeðalvetni (strange noble hydrogen)
3) þrenndareðalloft (threesome noble gas)

helion (helium-3 nucleus): þrjóreind (þrjór- from þrí (refering amount of nuclons) + fjór- (four, the amount of nucleons in normal, much more abundant He-4)