I am here to talk to you about Polonium
You might think polonium is just another element on the periodic table and technically you are correct
Polonium is represented by the symbol Po, has the atomic number 84, and it has some properties of metals and some of the nonmetals.
While there are 118 elements that have been discovered so far, very few of them have been discovered by women.
Polonium is an element discovered by Marie Curie who was Polish, but she did most of her research in Paris. Polonium is Latin for Poland where she was born.
Polonium was the first element that was discovered by a woman scientist.
Marie Curie was working in the laboratory with a mineral called pitchblende, trying to figure out why it was radioactive. When the atoms of some elements break …show more content…
It took them months to complete their work because there was an extremely tiny amount of polonium in the ore.
They had to go through several tons of pitchblende to get a tiny amount of polonium. To give you an idea of how difficult this was, it would be like trying to find 2 grains of salt if they were spread out in a rock as big as a car!
Polonium is used as a neutron trigger for nuclear weapons, in making photographic plates, and to reduce static charges in industrial applications such as textile mills.
It is the only component of cigarette smoke to produce cancer in laboratory animals.
The polonium in tobacco is absorbed from phosphate fertilizers and causes lung cancer
Polonium is an element that hasn’t been important until the invention of atomic bombs
The polonium became a crucial material because it is used as a trigger in the center of the original atomic bombs
It's a solid at room temperature and a silvery-grey color in pure form.
Polonium is radioactive and gives off a blue glow.
You've got polonium in your body right now, because one form of it, is found in the environment, such as in