Polonium
The first element the Curies found, intensely radioactive and useful mainly for the static it removes.
Polonium was the first of the two elements Marie and Pierre Curie separated from pitchblende, and Marie Curie named it after Poland. It is a strong alpha emitter with no stable isotope, and it produces enough heat from its own decay to feel warm.
Alpha particles are stopped by paper or by skin, which makes polonium harmless outside the body and extremely dangerous inside it — a distinction that is the whole of its safety story.
Uses
The steady industrial use is static elimination. Alpha particles ionise the surrounding air, which lets accumulated charge drain away, and polonium sources are used where static would ruin a process — in film handling, textile manufacture and paper production.
Its decay heat has also been used as a compact power source for equipment operating where sunlight is unavailable.
How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.
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Sources
- Material WorldOur own writing
- Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
- US National Library of Medicine · Mixed — aggregated third-party content, rights retained by depositors