Plutonium

By

Marcie Ward

One hot summer day, mid July, Mickey and his best pal, Pluto, were working together in their garden. Well actually, Mickey was working and Pluto was off playing with the friendly birds. Pluto was admiring a bright blue bird, the blue jay. He instantly understood where his name was derived from. Then he turned to hear to solid red birds, red robins, chirping together. He again saw that they got their name from the color of their feathers. Just like the blue jay. Pluto began wondering. He knew where all his friends Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Daisy got their names from, but he still didn’t know what his name evolved from. He walked over to Mickey, now in a sweat and said, "Mickey, I know where you got your name from, where the blue bird and red robin got their name from, but I still don’t know where I got my name from. Is it from plutocracy, because I am so dominant? If not, then where did Pluto come from?"

Mickey looked up from his newly plants flowers, a little shocked and answered, "No Pluto, sorry to disappoint you, but your name didn’t come from plutocracy. Actually I got it from an element called PLUTONIUM. In fact, Plutonium is a very heavy, man-made metal that many millions of people in the world are trying to prevent any person from making it any more."

Pluto, with an embarrassed look on his face, then asked, "what does Plutonium do and why are people trying to get rid of it? I don’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want it, all they would have to do is look at me and be happy it was invented. I mean, without plutonium, I wouldn’t be the undesirable and cute dog that I am. By the way, who did invent it?"

Mickey responded, "Well first, Plutonium is a solid, silvery-gray metal. The atoms that make up Plutonium can split when bombarded with neutrons. This splitting of atoms can cause a chain reaction that releases tremendous amounts of energy, making plutonium ideal for nuclear weapons."

"Nuclear weapons?!! You mean like the one used in Hiroshima?" A worried Pluto asked.

"Well yes a little like the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima. As I was saying before your rudely interrupted me, it is used in nuclear weapons. People wish to diminish it are fighting for a good cause. I don’t think they care that you were named after it. When plutonium is removed from a bomb, it can’t be simply thrown away. It must be destroyed, disabled or carefully safeguarded from renegade countries and terrorist who would steal it to make their own weapons. Plutonium was discovered, not invented, and named for the planet Pluto in 1940 by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg and other scientists at the University of California at Berkeley." retorted Mickey.

"Well then, tell me more. We are studying the periodic table in my extremely fun chemistry class taught by the awesome Ms. O’Sullivan." voiced Pluto.

"The basic facts are: The atomic number is 94, the atomic symbol is Pu, the atomic weight is 244, the electron configuration is 2-8-18-32-24-8-2, the shells are 2,8,18,32,24,8,2, the filling orbital is 5f6, the melting point is 639.5 degrees C, the boiling point is 3235 degrees C, the number of protons and electrons are 94, the number of neutrons is 150, its classification is rare earth, the density @ 293 K is 19.84 g/cm cubed, and the crystal structure is Monoclinic. Oh, I almost forgot that it has 7 energy levels and the group number is actinide. One more thing, because of the high rate of emission of alpha particles and the element being specifically absorbed by bone marrow, plutonium, as well as all the other transuranium elements except neptunium, are radiological poisons and must be handled with very special equipment and precautions. Liquid plutonium is more dangerous than solid plutonium." replied Mickey

"So basically nothing truly and completely good has ever derived from plutonium." responded an upset Pluto.

"No, actually, 238Pu has been used in the Apollo missions to power seismic and other equipment on the lunar surface." with that, Mickey ended the discussion.

The term mole is Avogadro’s number of any particle of definite composition. It is used to indicate the quantity of a substance that has a mass in grams numerically equal to its molecular mass. This mass contains Avogadro’s number of molecules. One mole is also 6.02 x 10^23.