[jdurg]

I know this could/should be posted in the Nuclear Chemistry forum, but I wanted to post this in here since it requires a little bit of chemistry knowledge to even see this forum and if we wanted to get into some more detailed discussions we'd be able to.  I just wanted to start out by saying that radioactivity has always intrigued me.  Why does one metal spontaneously decompose into something else, while another metal remains as it is for eternity?  My interest in the topic only increased when my uranium metal sample arrived the other week.  It just mystifies me how these little fragments of metal can be so dangerous and cause so much harm if they aren't handled properly.  It's kind of neat just looking at the uranium and then realizing that the radioactivity of the sample isn't even close to as much as there is in the smoke detectors I own.  (Smoke detectors contain ~1.0 uCi of either Am-241 or Np-2??.  Though it's faaaaaaaaaar more common for them to have Am-241 than any amount of Neptunium.  The one I bought to get the Np was a cheap, generic brand and I'm not even confident that it's pure Np).  So these ionization chambers in the detectors have more radioactivity than the two grams of the pure uranium metal I have.  Interesting and frightening at the same time.    It's also kind of scary knowing that I could take one of the Uranium shavings I have, attach it to my beryllium ingot and then put some of my lead sheeting on top of the uranium/beryllium sandwich.  When I come back to it in a few months, the uranium will be turned into plutonium.  VERY scary knowing that I could do that if I was crazy/stupid enough.  

While looking for pictures of the transuranic and other radioactive elements, I also realized just how much fun it must have been to be a nuclear physicsit/chemist back in the WWII era.  During that time, so many discoveries were made about radioactivity and these new elements.  In virtually every chemistry course there is, you really don't get into the chemistry of the actinide metals or anything beyond silver for that matter.  They just tend to ignore them.  Once you do the research and realize that things like Am, Cu, Es, Cf, and other transuranic elements have half-lives into the thousands of years, it makes you wonder why more research isn't done on them.  Then you go and see a picture of pure Cu metal, which is maybe the size of small piece of cereal, red hot and glowing from the energy associated with its radioactivity.  Maybe I'm crazy, but I'd love to see some pure Actinium metal glowing with it's eerie blue color due to the radioactivity of it.  Sadly, many things like this will never been seen by most people due to confidentiallity and national security.  Still, wouldn't it be great to see pure Einstienium?    

[Donaldson Tan]

mitch: are there any textbooks available for actnide chemistry? since you specialise in this area of chemistry, what reference books do you use then as there are so few books on this field?

[Agent-X]

I have such a dirty mind when it comes to radioactive materials.