Question
Two answers required. Analytical chemists were preoccupied with the discovery and purification of these two sets of elements in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name these two sets of 3-plus valence elements that make up the f-block. Frank Spedding’s expertise using ion-exchange to separate one of these series got him recruited to separate the other for the Manhattan project.
ANSWER: lanthanides AND actinides [accept answers in either order; accept rare earth metals, rare earths, lanthanoids, or Ln in place of “lanthanides”; accept actinoids or Ac in place of “actinides”]
[10m] To smelt the actinide uranium, Spedding helped develop the Ames process, a variant of this reaction that transforms an oxide with aluminum to produce molten metal.
ANSWER: thermite reaction [accept Goldschmidt reaction]
[10h] Charles Allen Thomas brought staff from this company’s Dayton site to the Ames lab to work on plutonium purification. William Knowles worked on the asymmetric synthesis of levodopa as an employee of this company.
ANSWER: Monsanto [or Monsanto Company; prompt on Bayer or Thomas & Hochwalt Laboratories]
<Chemistry>
Summary
| 2024 ACF Nationals | 2024-04-21 | Y | 21 | 10.00 | 100% | 0% | 0% |
Data
| Cornell A | Berkeley A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Chicago C | Columbia A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Michigan | Chicago D | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Illinois | Claremont Colleges | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| WUSTL B | Cornell B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Florida | Kentucky | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Harvard | Duke | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Iowa State | North Carolina A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Rutgers | Johns Hopkins | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Yale B | Maryland | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Minnesota A | Ottawa | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Minnesota B | Chicago B | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| NYU | WUSTL A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Northwestern | Purdue | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Penn | Truman State | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Arizona State | South Carolina | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Stanford | Vanderbilt | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Chicago A | Texas | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Berkeley B | Toronto A | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Toronto B | Waterloo | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| Yale A | Georgia Tech | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 |