Editing Carbon group (section)

===Modern discoveries===
[[amorphous silicon|Amorphous elemental silicon]] was first obtained pure in 1824 by the Swedish chemist [[Jöns Jacob Berzelius]]; impure silicon had already been obtained in 1811. [[crystalline silicon|Crystalline elemental silicon]] was not prepared until 1854, when it was obtained as a product of electrolysis.

Germanium is one of three elements the existence of which was predicted in 1869 by the Russian chemist [[Dmitri Mendeleev]] when he first devised his periodic table. However, the element was not actually discovered for some time. In September 1885, a miner discovered a mineral sample in a silver mine and gave it to the mine manager, who determined that it was a new mineral and sent the mineral to [[Clemens Winkler|Clemens A. Winkler]]. Winkler realized that the sample was 75% silver, 18% sulfur, and 7% of an undiscovered element. After several months, Winkler isolated the element and determined that it was element 32.<ref name = "Nature's Building Blocks"/>

The first attempt to discover flerovium (then referred to as "element 114") was in 1969, at the [[Joint Institute for Nuclear Research]], but it was unsuccessful. In 1977, researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research bombarded [[plutonium-244]] atoms with [[calcium-48]], but were again unsuccessful. This nuclear reaction was repeated in 1998, this time successfully.<ref name = "Nature's Building Blocks"/>