Talk:Francium

Article changed over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements format by User:maveric149. Elementbox converted 10:05, 15 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 15:55, 10 July 2005).

Information Sources

Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Francium. Additional text was taken directly from the Elements database 20001107, and Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913). Other information was obtained from the sources listed on the main page but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

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Talk

• students —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.151.240.39 (talk) 21:29, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Reaction to Water

There is no mention in the article about its reactivity to water. I assume it does, as it would follow its family's traits, but I'm also sure that there has never been enough to test its reaction. I'm sure, however, that it's pretty massive.

Something fishy with the isotope chart

There is a beta decay altering the mass number. Can someone knowledgable please correct? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.64.177.93 (talk • contribs) 09:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

Fixed accordingly. Femto 15:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Liquid near room temperature

In the Mercury article it is said that francium is a liquid. But here (in the francium article) it says it's a solid. Now, I know it's no big deal because nobody's ever gotten enough of it pure for the phase to make a difference, but it might look better if it were consistent, unless there is some reason otherwise.

Since mercury includes the qualifier "at or near room temperature", no problem here. Femto 11:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I would think that if any sizeable amount of francium were in say a drop of liquid, it would almost certainly vaporize because of the heat given off by its intense radioactivity. Joeylawn 04:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

It doesnt just vaporize, it explodes

In the Mercury talk page there's a discussion of why mercury is a liquid at room temperature; does anyone know why caesium and francium have such low melting points, and what that might suggest for the next element in the group, if it ever were produced in enough quantity for such a macroscopic property to come about? 208.23.142.201 18:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

If you will note the melting points of the Alkali Metals, you will see as the atomic number increases, the melting point drops. Just my 2 cents.

???

I am no expert in this subject, but maybe we could change the phrase "making it possibly the rarest elements in the crust, along with astatine." to "making it one of the rarest elements in the crust, next to astatine." See astatine talk page for more info.

Not entirely encyclopedic in style

"Francium has the lowest electronegativity of any element. This means it surrenders its electrons most readily. It is named after France, the country that surrenders most readily."

Har har. Hilarious, but doesn't this constitute a violation of the NPOV rule? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.251.240.113 (talk)

Removed. Femto 12:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

You have to put it back. --84.70.131.16 18:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Neither solid nor liquid

I suggest to remove the "data" like 900 K melting point of Fr. Now I only add question mark. Nobody has measured the melting/freezing point of francium or even produced any solid or liquid francium. The same about boiling point, density, thermal conductivity etc. Alternatively: add melting point of seaborgium (I suggest 4444 K, by pure extrapolation from Cr, Mo and W), ununhexium etc., if you think it is appropriate to mix measured values with quessed ones without comments. They are already well mixed in Wikipedia tables like "Melting points of the elements (data page)" 84.10.114.122 11:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC), accidental visitor, Poland

21.8 minute half-life

i think the half-life for the most stable isotope of francium is actually 22.8 or 22.9 minutes, not just 22. G man yo 10:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Reference is Isotopes of francium and its talk page. Femto 12:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a discrepancy in this article: in the table it says francium 223 has a half life of 22.00 minutes, whereas in the article is says 21.8, which is possibly from where this confusion has arisen. I am a lemon (talk) 04:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Picture

I may have found a rare picture of Francium here. I'll try to get permission to use it and maybe upload it onto wikipedia for this article. Might be a good idea. -- Kevin ^(TALK)_(MUSIC) 02:48, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that's a picture of uraninite. Don't bother. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• i think that the picture should be added, it shows the natural occurance of Francium. i think that the caption should also iclude the think about it only containing about i atom. File:FireFlames.jpgYes, I really am a Sith Lord ^(Comms) 14:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

GA review

This article is very well done and well referenced. I made a few minor changes, but overall, it meets the good article criteria. The lead could use a little bit of expansion, but is sufficient for GA status. Dr. Cash 01:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Solubility

Question: how can all francium salts be soluable if francium can co-precipitate with some caesium salts? -- Rmrfstar 14:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, lovely discrepancies. The journal that mentions coprecipitation made a passing reference to caesium salts as being insoluble. However, CRC says francium salts are soluble, and caesium claims that caesium salts are soluble. I will remove the word insoluble from the article. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not the word "insoluable" that's the issue, but the word "precipitate": if it precipitates, it cannot also be soluable. -- Rmrfstar 04:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

"Soluble" is not a well-defined term anyway. Some salts, such as the perchlorate, have a "relatively low" solubility (I think 1 g / 100 g H2O for CsCl04, but I'd have to check; it doesn't seem too low if you look at it in grams, but in moles it's much lower that the solubilities for similar sodium and potassium salts), but they are still slightly soluble. FrClO4 should probably be less soluble than CsClO4. --Itub 06:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Direct quote from the coprecipitation article: Mme. Perey studied the coprecipitation of francium on insoluble salts of caesium If precipitation cannot happen without solubility, then there are two possible errors:

• The word insoluble. This may be because of what Itub suggested, in that caesium salts have very low solubility.
• The word coprecipitation. This is unlikely, since the entire paper discusses isolation of francium through coprecipitation.

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't doubt that francium co-precipitates with caesium salts, but that [all] francium salts are water-soluable as Hyde apparently states. -- Rmrfstar 21:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

It appears I've made some errors regarding the citations in that section. I've changed what I can, and I'll add the correct citation after the francium salts are water-soluble statement once I have access to my materials (in a few days). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Done --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

You are confusing soluble and infinitely soluble. Even table salt can precipitate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:04, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Natural occurrence of francium

The following two statements appear in the article and seem to me to be mutually incompatible (though I am not a nuclear physicist):

(1) "In a given sample of uranium, there is estimated to be only one francium atom for every 1×10¹⁸ uranium atoms."

(2) "1 ton of natural uranium ore contains approximately 3.8×10^-3 g of francium-223 and only 1×10^-17 g of francium-221."

The first of the two statements appears to be consistent with data for halflives and branching ratios in the table for the actinium series in the "Decay series" article, as well as with estimates I have seen for the amount of uranium in the earth's crust (trillions of tons) as compared to the amount of francium (30 grams). In that case, the second statement is incorrect by many, many orders of magnitude. Or am I missing some subtlety here? Can someone with access to the source referenced perhaps check that it is being quoted correctly? Or comment from your own professional knowledge and experience? Piperh 20:30, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I've been doing some calculations, and what seems to make the most sense would be if the 3.8x10^-3 were changed to 3.8x10^-13, as this makes the ratio similar (not exactly the same) for both statements. I'm not sure if this was an error on my part or a typo in the encyclopedia. I'll have another look next time I go to the library.

The first edition of Greenwood and Earnshaw (p. 76) gives a natural abundance of 2×10⁻¹⁸ ppm, which "corresponds" to 15 g in the top 1 km of the earth's crust. Given that uranium is widely distributed in the crust, I would be wary of quoting figures for "uranium ore". Which ore? The ore from Oklo? :) Physchim62 (talk) 14:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

The second statement is almost exactly the same as that in Van Nostrand's, including the magnitude. Seeing as it doesn't really seem to correspond with any of the other information, and since Van Nostrand's didn't seem very dependable for francium info anyway, I'm going to remove that statement. I'd rather not delve into the depths of incongruent information just so we can keep one factoid. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Uranium ores have varying concentrations of uranium—some are upwards of 65% U, many are less than 1%. It seems rather bizarre to try and make a firm statement about the presence of anything in uranium ore—include uranium—that doesn't specify what type of ore it is. It is a very different claim than "a given sample of uranium," which implies it is refined (e.g. in pure oxide form). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Recommendations for article improvement

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.^[?]when actual characters are counted, the lead is too small. when displayed characters are counted, the lead is the correct size, which I think makes more sense.
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  • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).^[?] fixed
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You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Wim van Dorst (Talk) 11:25, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyone Find this Ironic

Of all the elements on the periodic table, Francium has the lowest first ionization energy: of all the elements, it surrenders it electron the most easily. -123fakestreet

Har, Har. -- Rmrfstar 03:15, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

least stable

As written, this implies that Francium is more stable than element 102; but if true, we should say so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

It is not true. ²²³Fr can't even reach 22 minutes when, according to the Nobelium (element 102) article, ²⁵⁹No has a half-life of 58 minutes. Dajwilkinson 23:55, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Writing

Of the elements added to the periodic table, francium was the last to have been discovered in nature before being synthesized.

This is clumsy and incoherent. Added is unnecessary, and the whole phrase Of the elements added to the periodic table is a modifier to last, out of place. While I understand what thought before being synthesized is intended to convey, it does not actually say what it intends: It is consistent with a later element being discovered in nature, and not synthesized; although of course that is not true. (Use the right word, not its second cousin, as Mark Twain said.) In short, this sentence calls for being recast.

Francium was the last element discovered in nature, rather than synthesized.

conveys the same content; is half as long, and has natural syntax. I do not claim it to be perfect writing; further tweaking is doubtless called for. Rather than synthesized was an effort to minimize the transition, it may still be unnecessary.

But reversion to bad writing is neither helpful to the encyclopeda nor collegial. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

But this statement "Francium was the last naturally occurring element to be discovered, following rhenium in 1925." is simply false. Astatine, for example, is a naturally occurring element although it was first discovered through synthesis. --Syd Henderson (talk) 23:51, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Relevance of Numbers

"Liquid francium, if such a substance were created, should have a surface tension of 0.05092 J/m² at its melting point" the way this line is referenced in the actual article it implies that there is something interesting about that fact. Well what exactly is interesting about it? Secondly the line refers to a theoretical possibilty, which is interesting, but it doesn't really have any relevance to what we actually know about Francium, and so it adds conjecture to a part of the entry that is talking about actually understood characteristics, at the very least the comment should be moved to another part of the article, and the relevance of the number should be expounded. --Machachachi 15:28, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Disparity with Caesium article

This article lists the estimated amount of Francium in the Earth's crust at any one time as 30g, while the Caesium article lists it as 550g. I'm not gonna take a guess as to which is right but I'm pretty sure one must be wrong. --Duke Leto (talk) 11:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Both estimations have sources. I'd be inclined to go with the one referenced in this article, which is from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, rather than the other which is from 'The Chemical Educator'. However, I shall leave this to more knowledgeable persons than me. I am a lemon (talk) 04:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

could someone help me?

so could someone tell me how big an explosion does francium make if it is put in water? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris Iz Cali (talk • contribs) 04:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a hypothetical question, since only about 30 g exist spread all over the Earth's crust at any given time (according to the article). --Itub (talk) 12:07, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

image

Emesee (talk) 08:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)