All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 84, a metalloid
The first element Marie Curie discovered, named for her homeland, and one of the deadliest substances known.
Period 6, group 16. The other metalloids are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
Six valence electrons, like oxygen and sulfur, yet polonium behaves as a metal. Its intense radioactivity heats its own samples and makes its chemistry hard to study.
Uranium ores hold only about 0.1 milligram per ton. Nearly all polonium is made in nuclear reactors by bombarding bismuth-209 with neutrons.
Marie and Pierre Curie found it in 1898 in pitchblende, a uranium ore, months before they found radium. Marie named it after Poland, which was then divided among Russia, Prussia and Austria and did not exist as a country.
Devices that remove static electricity in factories, since its alpha particles make air conduct. It heated Soviet lunar rovers and, mixed with beryllium, served as a neutron source in early nuclear weapons.
Swallowed or inhaled, a few micrograms can kill, because its alpha radiation destroys tissue from inside. Polonium-210 was used to poison Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.