Bohrium

Bohrium is named after Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics. Bohr won the Nobel Prize in 1922, and his model of the atom is still taught in every chemistry class. Bohrium was first synthesized in 1981 by Peter Armbruster and Gottfried Münzenberg at the GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany.

Bohrium is created by smashing lighter elements together at incredibly high speeds in particle accelerators. Its most stable isotope has a half-life of only about 61 seconds. Scientists have managed to produce enough atoms (barely) to confirm that bohrium behaves chemically like rhenium, its lighter cousin in the same column of the periodic table. It has absolutely no practical applications — it exists solely to expand human knowledge.

Bohrium's symbol 'Bh' is a distinctive two-letter element in Spellement. While 'bh' does not appear at the start of English words, partial emphasis lets spellers use 'b' or 'h' individually — both common consonants useful for building many different English words.