Talk:Actinium/Archive 1

Archive 1

Untitled

Article changed over to new Wikipedia:WikiProject_Elements format by Mav, Mkweise, and Dwmyers 15:40 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC). Elementbox converted 10:26, 17 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 07:26, 13 July 2005). 07:26, 13 July 2005

Information Sources

Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Actinium. Additional text was taken directly from USGS Actinium Statistics and Information, from the Elements database 20001107 (via [http://www.dict.org dict.org), Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (via dict.org) and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org). Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

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Toxicity of Actinium 227

The article states, "Actinium-227 is extremely radioactive, and in terms of its potential for radiation induced health effects, actinium-227 is about as dangerous as plutonium. Ingesting even small amounts of actinium-227 would represent a serious health hazard." In fact (not accounting for decay products) Ac 227 is 28400year / 21.7year = 1309 times more radioactive than plutonium 239. Also, its decay products are short lived (the longest is 18 days, much less than the 7*10^8 year half life of plutonium 239). Plutonium 239 emits alpha rays, but Ac 227 and decay products emit alpha, beta, and gamma (?) rays. For this reason, actinium 227 is more dangerous (for the same quantity) than plutonium 239. 01:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)Polonium

Toxicity of Actinium 227

The article states, "Actinium-227 is extremely radioactive, and in terms of its potential for radiation induced health effects, actinium-227 is about as dangerous as plutonium. Ingesting even small amounts of actinium-227 would represent a serious health hazard." In fact (not accounting for decay products) Ac 227 is 28400year / 21.7year = 1309 times more radioactive than plutonium 239. Also, its decay products are short lived (the longest is 18 days, much less than the 7*10^8 year half life of plutonium 239). Plutonium 239 emits alpha rays, but Ac 227 and decay products emit alpha, beta, and gamma (?) rays. For this reason, actinium 227 is more dangerous (for the same quantity) than plutonium 239. 01:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)Polonium

File:Actinium_RSC.jpg is used here?

If it is, I can't find it here. DASHBot can be so annoying. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Actinium/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

G'day, I'll make straightforward copyedits as I go (Please revert if I accidentally change the meaning) and jot down queries as I go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Debierne and described the substance (in 1899) as similar to titanium.. -grammar

The stated history of the discovery of actinium remained questionable for decades - "remained questionable" sounds odd, and the adjective has come to have a connotation of "bad" rather than "uncertain" or "debated". Needs rephrasing.

I am curious - the article leaves me wanting to know why the uncertainty of dates. Is there any other information which can be added as to why this has happened?

One might expect this light element to be easy to study, but it is one of the least available. Now we can produce it in neutron reactors, but in the 1900s, scientists had to deal with 0.2 mg Ac per tonne of uranium. I guess difficulties in separation from other elements (mentioned in the article) was the main reason for mistrust to some results. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Its symbol Ac is also used in abbreviations of such chemicals as acetyl, acetate and acetaldehyde, although actinium has nothing to do with these compounds. - subject jumps a little, it is as if we haven't really told teh reader the letters are for the element before launching into other uses...and it needs referencing.

Hm, it is in the first line of the article .. feel free to tweak/suggest. I've added some refs. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

oops, missed that. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Owing to its strong radioactivity, actinium glows in the dark with a pale blue light - why? Can this be discussed a bit more?

Added a ref and a bit of explanation. This is a general property of all strongly radioactive elements, (and no source articulates this specifically for actinium). They emit energetic particles which excite air (which is mostly nitrogen+oxygen), and the number of excitations per second is so high that we can see blue light due to electronic transitions in air molecules. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thirty-six radioisotopes have been characterized - "characterized" seems an odd choice of word, why not "discovered" or "identified"?

The low natural concentration, and the close similarity of physical and chemical properties to those of lanthanum and other lanthanides - this I don't get - if it is found in uranium, why are we comparing it with lanthanum?

All uranium ores contain large amounts of lanthanides, and lanthanum is the most abundant of them - this is one of the most basic facts on actinides in the Earth crust. I've added a bit on that. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

however, potential applications are being developed. - and some elaboration?

Old weasel. Removed. I am unaware of and do doubt there is much practical development in this area. I accidentally have this link at hand [1] saying "Consequently, the metallurgy of actinium has been little studied and, due to the great expense and trouble involved, probably will not be studied extensively in the future." Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't get an impression when reading this of how much of the element can be made at a time - what are standard amounts? what is the biggest amount?

The article mentions "milligram amounts", and the sources don't say more. They say the purification stage limits the amounts to milligrams, and usually the exact number is a strong function of desired purity. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

References need standardising, e.g. names in form of "Smith, John" (which would appear to involve least amount of tweaking)

The above prose concerns have been addressed by friendly copyeditors :). I've unified the names. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

One might consider using http://radchem.nevada.edu/classes/rdch710/files/actinium.pdf (cite it as Haire, Richard G. (2006). "Actinium". In Morss; Edelstein, Norman M.; Fuger, Jean (eds.). The Chemistry of the Actinide and Transactinide Elements (3rd ed.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science+Business Media. ISBN 1-4020-3555-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 14:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

1. Well written?:

Prose quality:

Manual of Style compliance:

2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:

References to sources:

Citations to reliable sources, where required:

No original research:

3. Broad in coverage?:

Major aspects:

Focused:

4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:

Fair representation without bias:

5. Reasonably stable?

No edit wars, etc. (Vandalism does not count against GA):

6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?:

Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

Overall:

Pass or Fail:

Melting and boiling points

Greenwood and Earnshaw give 817 °C and 2470 °C, which would seem to fit better with the trends down group 3 (Sc: 1539, 2478; Y: 1530, 3264; La: 920, 3420; Ac: 817, 2470). Of course, they do not specialise in the chemistry of the rare radioactives (i.e. all the radioactives except Th, U, and Pu), and so they may very well be wrong in this case. Double sharp (talk) 12:14, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

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half-life of Ac-227: 21.772 or 21.773 years?

The article contains these two different figures. Nicknicknickandnick (talk) 06:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

They are very much the same to me, because the measurement accuracy is never that good. Materialscientist (talk) 06:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

May just be a typo. I'll fix it. --3.14159265358pi (talk) 22:10, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. --3.14159265358pi (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

If you want to convert the above data into more useful information, you can say that the isotope OE89Ac227 has a base 10 log halflife of 10E6^8.839 seconds and consists of 89 pairs of deuterons plus 49 extra neutrons with 14 of the deuteron pairs having been converted into 7 alpha particles. It is, of course, the first element of the 14 element (14 I say 14!) actinide series, and accordingly should be a cogener of 57La lanthanum. It falls on the stability trend line A = 3Z - 40, and into the 4n + 3 (uranium-actinium series) 0f radioactive materials.WFPM (talk) 04:34, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, the actinides are chemically defined, and so Lr is also defined as an actinide despite not being in the f-block. It is unfortunate that there is no single term for just the f-block actinides (I propose "5f-series"). Double sharp (talk) 06:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

But if you include 103Lr Lawrencium in the actinides, then you wont have the necessary 2 + 4 + 4 = 10 elements needed to complete the next transition series (Up to 112) And you're fouling up the count of that series for no purpose. And 103Lr is the first of that 10 element series. See Talk:Charles Janet.WFPM (talk) 02:09, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

And,of course after you have added the 2 + 4 + 4 +4 = 14 deuterons to the nucleus to make the actinide series additions, there is then no place in the actinide structure addition for an additional deuteron addition. And in this area of the periodic table the incremental growth and dynamic balance of the structure against nuclear structure deficiencies is more important than any chemical affinity properties. So the structural properties are going to have to be paid more attention to.WFPM (talk) 23:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't have problems with considering Lr to be both an actinide and a transition metal. Each classification has its own advantages in its own context (the actinide classification for chemistry, and the transition metal classification for physics). Double sharp (talk) 11:47, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

That's correct as to the classification problem. But with regard to the real physical entity problem, it is wise to note that the Actinium atom is the first of a new category of deuteron additions to the nucleus, and that the range of this category is 2 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 14 additional deuterons. And I don't see much chemistry in this combining activity and therefor don't like the confusion that this 15 element actinide listing is causing. So you say TS and I say Charles JanetWFPM (talk) 15:49, 23 May 2012 (UTC) And your efforts to rationalize the 15 element actinide series in the Janet table are a good looking compromise and don't look bad until you get around to try to build an octahedron model of the 15th (103Rf) atom where you're going to find that the 15th (103Rf) deuteron goes on at a different series level,(that of the next 2 + 4 + 4 = 10 element series. Aah se la vie.WFPM (talk) 20:36, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

If you're talking about the nucleus alone, I do in fact consider Lr a transition metal. If you're talking about the chemistry, Lr is an actinide. That is why I prefer to restrict the term "actinide" to chemical usages and use "5f-series" for the nucleus. Double sharp (talk) 12:14, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

(Note from five and a half years later; this was evidently a case of confusion between brain and fingers. Of course 5f refers to the electrons, not the nuclear shells, which have nothing to do with the electron filling order despite WFPM's pet theory!) Double sharp (talk) 02:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

You evidently know enough about chemistry for the distinction to make a difference. I don't know enough about chemistry to care. But I can see that 103Lr is structurally the first of the next 10 atomic nuclei. And I need it to go with 104Rf to make up the first 2 of the next 2 + 4 + 4 = 10 series. Incidentally, when you make a model, the appearance is not so much like an octahedron, but rather like more like the image in Zircon, because the 4 sides of the octahedron have a definite thickness of 1 or 2 levels of nuclides, rather than the sharp side edges of the octahedron image.

Claims of no separation from lanthanum date from 1950: are we sure things did not change in 68 years?

The sentence:

The low natural concentration, and the close similarity of physical and chemical properties to those of lanthanum and other lanthanides, which are always abundant in actinium-bearing ores, render separation of actinium from the ore impractical, and complete separation was never achieved.

is sourced to a 1950 article. Are we sure things did not change in the meantime? For example this, from 1953, claims total chromatographic separation. I don't know if it counts since it is perhaps not a practical method to produce significant amounts of pure actinium, but I suspect in 68 years something has changed. --cyclopia^speak! 07:23, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

References

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