Radon Atomic number 86 Bad stuff Commentary

Paris, Montreal, Halle, London—Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, Robert Bowie Owens, Ernest Rutherford, Friedrich Ernst Dorn, André-Louis Debierne, William Ramsay, Robert Whytlaw-Gray elements

Radon

• In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie
• observed that radium
• emanated a radioactive gas.
• Later that year, Robert Bowie Owens
• and Ernest Rutherford in Montreal
• observed that thorium
• emanated a radioactive gas.
• Owens and Rutherford
• called it Thorium Emanation.
• In 1900, Friedrich Ernst Dorn
• repeated the Curies’s experiment
• and reported a Radium Emanation.
• In 1903, André-Louis Debierne
• observed that actinium emanated
• a radioactive gas, Actinium Emanation.
• The emanations were given different names
• although in 1904 William Ramsey suggested
• they might contain a new noble gas
• and in 1910, Ramsey and Robert Whytlaw-Gray
• isolated radon, determined its density and spectral pattern,
• and suggested naming it niton.
• Niton and the three emanations
• were isotopes
• of the radioactive noble gas radon.

Atomic number 86

• Uranium and thorium, long-lived
• radioactive elements,
• were part of our Earth when it formed
• and continue to decay slowly
• in a chain of unstable elements
• that includes radon.
• Radon is the mosquito of the periodic table.
• It’s released by rocks and soils,
• it accumlates in unventillated areas,
• and it’s not good for you.

Bad stuff

• Odorless, tasteless,
• invisible,
• radon gas permeates
• your playspace
• and seriously
• deteriorates
• your ability to play.
• I mean this.
• It lurks
• in your basement
• and it gives you
• lung cancer.
• It’s not
• a pretty gas.
• You can’t see it.
• You can’t smell it.
• But it’s the product
• of decay,
• and it brings you closer
• to your own decay.