Polonium nuclear propertie

The interplay between the chemical and nuclear properties of radon makes it a health hazard. Because radon is a noble gas, it is extremely unreactive and is therefore free to escape from the ground without chemically reacting along the way. It is readily inhaled and exhaled with no direct chemical effects. Its half-life, however, is only 3.82 clan s. It decays, by losing an alpha particle, into a radioisotope of polonium ... 

Polonium, because of its very low abundance and very short half-life, is not obtained from natural sources. Virtually all our knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of the element come from studies on Po which is best made by neutron irradiation of in a nuclear reactor ... 

Curie, Marie S. (1867-1934). Born in Warsaw, Poland, she and her husband Pierre made an intensive study of the radioactive properties of uranium. They isolated polonium in 1898 from pitchblende ore. By devising a tedious and painstaking separation method, they obtained a salt of radium in 1912, receiving the Nobel Prize in physics for this achievement in 1903 jointly with Becquerel. In 1911, Mme. Curie alone received the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Her work laid the foundation of the study of radioactive elements which culminated in control of nuclear fission. 

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