Polonium Quotes & Sayings

We believe the substance we have extracted from pitchblende contains a metal not yet observed, related to bismuth by its analytical properties. If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to call it polonium, from the name of the original country of one of us. — Marie Curie

Thus the radio elements formed strange and cruel families in which each member was created by spontaneous transformation of the mother substance: radium was a "descendant" of uranium, polonium a descendant of radium. — Eve Curie

I am afraid of radium and polonium ... I don't want to monkey with them. — Thomas A. Edison

Polonium is, frankly, pretty useless, and no country in the world except Russia bothered to refine it by the late 2000s. — Sam Kean

Scarily, cadmium is not even the worst poison among the elements. It sits above mercury, a neurotoxin. And to the right of mercury sit the most horrific mug shots on the periodic table - thallium, lead, and polonium - the nucleus of poisoner's corridor. — Sam Kean

Some months ago we discovered that certain light elements emit positrons under the action of alpha particles. Our latest experiments have shown a very striking fact: when an aluminium foil is irradiated on a polonium preparation [alpha ray emitter], the emission of positrons does not cease immediately when the active preparation is removed: the foil remains radioactive and the emission of radiation decays exponentially as for an ordinary radio-element. We observed the same phenomenon with boron and magnesium. — Frederic Joliot-Curie