Talk:Californium
From Academic Kids
Article changed over to new WikiProject Elements format by mav 08:17, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Information Sources
Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Californium (http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/98.html). Additional text was taken directly from the Elements database 20001107 (via dict.org (http://www.dict.org)) and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org (http://www.dict.org)). Data for the table were obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and WikiProject Elements but were reformatted and converted into SI units.
Talk
explosive decay
I've just been related a story from an ex-Soviet nuclear engineer. He said Californium was a problematic element to work with because it exhibits explosive decay; the element decays, splitting off a Helium atom (quite heavy), which given the rate of decay will quickly coat a room in radioactive dust. The attraction of it was it acted as a good calibration element, with a 2.5 year half-life, and it releases many neutrons when an atom splits. How do we add information like that to the article? Josh Parris ✉ 00:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
