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	Actinium has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result August 10, 2011 Good article nominee Listed

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Elements GA‑class Mid‑importance

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Article changed over to new Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Elements format by Mav, Mkweise, and Dwmyers 15:40 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC). Elementbox converted 10:26, 17 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 07:26, 13 July 2005).

Information Sources

Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Actinium. Additional text was taken directly from USGS Actinium Statistics and Information, from the Elements database 20001107 (via [http://www.dict.org dict.org), Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (via dict.org) and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org). Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

Talk

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Hypothetical Application of Actinium

In principle, actinium 227 could be used as a source of thermoelectric power. It has a half life of 21.773 years and emits approximatly 56 J/s per gram of actinium 227 (this calculated energy release takes into account decay produts at equlibrum, assumes no gamma rays, assumes all alpha rays emmited have the same energy, and that all beta rays emitted have the same energy).

Actually, the energy emmitted per gram of actinium in equilibrum can be calculated to be approximatly 10 watts per gram with improved data, but this is still approximate and uncertain.

Toxicity of Actinium 227

The article states, "Actinium-227 is extremely radioactive, and in terms of its potential for radiation induced health effects, actinium-227 is about as dangerous as plutonium. Ingesting even small amounts of actinium-227 would represent a serious health hazard." In fact (not accounting for decay products) Ac 227 is 28400year / 21.7year = 1309 times more radioactive than plutonium 239. Also, its decay products are short lived (the longest is 18 days, much less than the 7*10^8 year half life of plutonium 239). Plutonium 239 emits alpha rays, but Ac 227 and decay products emit alpha, beta, and gamma (?) rays. For this reason, actinium 227 is more dangerous (for the same quantity) than plutonium 239. 01:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)Polonium

half-life of Ac-227: 21.772 or 21.773 years?

The article contains these two different figures. Nicknicknickandnick (talk) 06:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

They are very much the same to me, because the measurement accuracy is never that good. Materialscientist (talk) 06:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

May just be a typo. I'll fix it. --3.14159265358pi (talk) 22:10, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

File:Actinium_RSC.jpg is used here?

If it is, I can't find it here. DASHBot can be so annoying. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 13:14, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Actinium/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

G'day, I'll make straightforward copyedits as I go (Please revert if I accidentally change the meaning) and jot down queries as I go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Debierne and described the substance (in 1899) as similar to titanium.. -grammar

The stated history of the discovery of actinium remained questionable for decades - "remained questionable" sounds odd, and the adjective has come to have a connotation of "bad" rather than "uncertain" or "debated". Needs rephrasing.

I am curious - the article leaves me wanting to know why the uncertainty of dates. Is there any other information which can be added as to why this has happened?

One might expect this light element to be easy to study, but it is one of the least available. Now we can produce it in neutron reactors, but in the 1900s, scientists had to deal with 0.2 mg Ac per tonne of uranium. I guess difficulties in separation from other elements (mentioned in the article) was the main reason for mistrust to some results. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Its symbol Ac is also used in abbreviations of such chemicals as acetyl, acetate and acetaldehyde, although actinium has nothing to do with these compounds. - subject jumps a little, it is as if we haven't really told teh reader the letters are for the element before launching into other uses...and it needs referencing.

Hm, it is in the first line of the article .. feel free to tweak/suggest. I've added some refs. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

oops, missed that. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Owing to its strong radioactivity, actinium glows in the dark with a pale blue light - why? Can this be discussed a bit more?

Added a ref and a bit of explanation. This is a general property of all strongly radioactive elements, (and no source articulates this specifically for actinium). They emit energetic particles which excite air (which is mostly nitrogen+oxygen), and the number of excitations per second is so high that we can see blue light due to electronic transitions in air molecules. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thirty-six radioisotopes have been characterized - "characterized" seems an odd choice of word, why not "discovered" or "identified"?

The low natural concentration, and the close similarity of physical and chemical properties to those of lanthanum and other lanthanides - this I don't get - if it is found in uranium, why are we comparing it with lanthanum?

All uranium ores contain large amounts of lanthanides, and lanthanum is the most abundant of them - this is one of the most basic facts on actinides in the Earth crust. I've added a bit on that. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

however, potential applications are being developed. - and some elaboration?

Old weasel. Removed. I am unaware of and do doubt there is much practical development in this area. I accidentally have this link at hand saying "Consequently, the metallurgy of actinium has been little studied and, due to the great expense and trouble involved, probably will not be studied extensively in the future." Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't get an impression when reading this of how much of the element can be made at a time - what are standard amounts? what is the biggest amount?

The article mentions "milligram amounts", and the sources don't say more. They say the purification stage limits the amounts to milligrams, and usually the exact number is a strong function of desired purity. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

References need standardising, e.g. names in form of "Smith, John" (which would appear to involve least amount of tweaking)

The above prose concerns have been addressed by friendly copyeditors :). I've unified the names. Materialscientist (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

One might consider using http://radchem.nevada.edu/classes/rdch710/files/actinium.pdf (cite it as Haire, Richard G. (2006). "Actinium". In Morss; Edelstein, Norman M.; Fuger, Jean (eds.). The Chemistry of the Actinide and Transactinide Elements (3rd ed.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science+Business Media. ISBN 1-4020-3555-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 14:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

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