Americium

NOTE: Americium is a radioactive element. Please do not "play" with radioactivity unless you are very well informed to what you are dealing with, and always keep in mind there is ALWAYS some risk.

Americium (am-er-ee-see-um) is a fairly normal looking silver-grey metal, I have no experience working with it as the only piece I can get is a tiny piece of foil, and melting or sanding would prove quite hazardous. The name, oddly, came from a former element named Europium after the continent of Europe, the discoverer decided it worthy to name it after the Americas because of this.

Americium's atomic symbol is Am, number is 95, and the most common isotope is Am-241, having 146 neutrons, and a half life of about 450 years. It appears in the Actinoid section of the periodic table, directly after Plutonium, which is quite a dangerous bomb-making element.

Being an Actinoid metal (Most of which are radioactive or synthetic), it is quite unusual, and I believe completely synthetic, meaning never occurs in nature. It is rare in the fact that it is very commonly used in nearly every house in America, crimped into a steel bead, in all common smoke detectors.

For safety sake, I'm not going to tell you specifically how to get it out, but I will say the entire smoke detector I used was only $4.50, so it must not be to expensive to make today.

Americium emits Alpha particles and low energy Gamma rays(See Radioactivity), Alpha particles are quite weak and can't penetrate even a thin piece of paper, and the Gamma rays are so low power that they do no harm for only short term exposure. Smoke detectors have shielding which makes them completely safe, but if you somehow got a piece of this inside you (In the form of sanding dust, which is why I never sand or grind my radioactive samples) it would probably do some damage just because the exposure time could be your whole life if it got stuck in your system.

I don't know the process for manufacturing Americium, and I don't know of any uses besides smoke detectors, or general "check sources" (set radiation levels for testing or calibrating radioactivity sensing devices). I have seen it used in a nifty device called a Spinthariscope, which shows radioactive decay by using any radiation source (Commonly Americium) and a chemical or compound that lights up in contact with radiation, releasing small flashes of green light whenever an Alpha particle hits it.

This is my Americium, crimped into a steel bead. It's hard to see, but there is a slight indent in the top of the steel bead, at the bottom of this indent is a very tiny piece of Americium foil, held firmly in place by steel that has been crimped around the edges. I wouldn't try to remove it from this steel bead, as it is safely stored, and fine for any experiments I might want to do with it. I might get a better picture if I have time.

Thanks for reading!

~Ben