Talk:Americium

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Article changed over to new Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements format by mav 05:55, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC). Elementbox converted 11:29, 17 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 23:35, 11 July 2005).

Contents 1 Information Sources 2 Talk 3 Hardness 4 Spoiler Suggestion 5 apparent inconsistency 6 Use in nuclear soil moisture gauges 7 Amount in a smoke detector

[edit] Information Sources

Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Americium. Additional text was taken directly from the Elements database 20001107 (via dict.org) and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org). Data for the table were obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements but were reformatted and converted into SI units.

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[edit] Talk

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I am not sure how to add titles to the references.

Ref. 1 ACTINIDE(III)/LANTHANIDE(III) PARTITIONING USING n-Pr-BTP AS EXTRACTANT: EXTRACTION KINETICS AND EXTRACTION TEST IN A HOLLOW FIBER MODULE

Ref 2 SANEX-BTP PROCESS DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Ref 3 EFFECTIVE ACTINIDE(III)-LANTHANIDE(III) SEPARATION IN MINIATURE HOLLOW FIBRE MODULES

Ref 4 The coordination chemistry of 1,2,4-triazinyl bipyridines with lanthanide(III) elements – implications for the partitioning of americium(III)

Ref 5 Separation Studies of /f/-Elements

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[edit] Hardness

what is the hardness of americium? (68.205.206.2)

Sorry, no hard (pun intended) numbers. Expanded the article from CRC Handbook "It appears to be more malleable than uranium or neptunium [...]". Femto 12:04, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spoiler Suggestion

Americium 239 is used in Splinter Cell 1. But I am not going 2 add this as I do not know if this has any place in a science article. --The1exile 18:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] apparent inconsistency

The article says that americium-241 comes from plutonium-241 by beta decay, but when I look at the plutonium page, I am told that plutonium-241 decays to a uranium isotope.

--Publunch 23:53, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Plutonium-241 has two decay modes. By far the dominant decay mode is beta decay, which yields americium-241. There is a tiny (0.002%) probability of alpha decay, which yields uranium-237. The statement on the plutonium page that you refer to has apparently since been removed. Piperh 21:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

'This element can be produced in kilogram amounts' - how? Do we have to thank our friends at Sellafield for our smoke detectors?

I think so, according to http://pubs.acs.org/cen/80th/print/americiumprint.html :

"n.Uses: Americium-241 is made in large quantities in nuclear reactors and is available to qualified users in the U.S. and the U.K. It is used as a portable source of X-rays, as a source of ionization for smoke detectors, and as a radioactive glass thickness gauge for the flat-glass industry."

81.31.17.152 01:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC) tygr007

[edit] Use in nuclear soil moisture gauges

It's use in said gauges might be a valid addition to this article

Ordosingularis 19:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amount in a smoke detector

Here is a proof that the mass of 0.9 μCi of ²⁴¹Am (typical amount in a modern smoke detector) is closer to 0.2 μg than 0.2 mg.

The decay rate of a sample of a radionuclide is equal to , where t_1/2 is the half-life and N is the number of atoms of that nuclide.

Here the decay rate is 0.9 x 10^-6 x 3.7 x 10¹⁰ disintegrations per second and t_1/2 = 432.2 x 365.25 x 24 x 60 x 60 seconds. So N = 6.55 x 10¹⁴ atoms of ²⁴¹Am which is equivalent to a mass of N x 241.06 / (6.022 x 10²³) = 0.26 x 10^-6 g. Warut (talk) 07:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)