Americium facts for kids

Americium is a chemical element. It is a radioactive metal. It has the chemical symbol Am. It has the atomic number 95. In chemistry it is placed in a group of metal elements named the actinides. Americium is a transuranic element (Transuranic means after uranium. All the elements used after uranium are man-made). It is a radioactive element that does not exist in nature. Americium has to be made. It has a silver color. Americium is made by bombarding a plutonium target with neutrons.

It was the fourth transuranic element to be discovered. It was named for America, like Francium was named for France.

The longest half life of any type of americium is 7370 years.

Americium is used in most smoke detectors. The level of radioactivity is not enough to cause cancer, so it is safe to for the people in an area where smoke detectors with americium are in use.

Images for kids

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  The 60-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, in August 1939.

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  The triangle in the glass tube contains the first sample of americium (as the hydroxide (Am(OH)3)), produced in 1944.

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  Americium was detected in the fallout from the Ivy Mike nuclear test.

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  Chromatographic elution curves revealing the similarity between the lanthanides Tb, Gd, and Eu and the corresponding actinides Bk, Cm, and Am.

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  Double-hexagonal close packing with the layer sequence ABAC in the crystal structure of α-americium (A: green, B: blue, C: red).

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  Predicted structure of amerocene [(η8-C8H8)2Am]

See also

In Spanish: Americio para niños