Page 176 - The Periodic Table Book

84
Po Polonium

State: Solid
84 84 125 Discovery: 1898

The Oxygen Group uranium ore Uraninite
Forms

This

contains
0.0000001
per cent
polonium.

This mineral
contains uranium
atoms that break
apart to form
atoms of polonium.

Uses

This robotic lunar buggy
was kept warm on the Moon’s Lunokhod rover
surface by the heat produced
by the polonium inside it.

brush
Anti-static
This brush is used to This bomb can be
remove static electric detonated when the
charge from camera polonium inside it ignites.
lenses and music records. Atom bomb

Polonium is very radioactive: 1 g (0.03 oz) and is normally produced in nuclear reactors.
of this metal quickly heats up to 500°C Despite its radioactivity, this element is used
(932°F) because of the radiation it emits. in a few ways. It can trigger the explosion of
This element was discovered by Marie and atom bombs. It heats and powers spacecraft,
Pierre Curie in 1898. Marie named it after such as the Russian Lunokhod rovers, which
174 Poland, her homeland. It is rare in nature, landed on the Moon in the 1970s.

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