Running Head: Final Paper
Is the use of Plutonium in America's Future?
Com 220: University of Phoenix
Many Americans do not know that plutonium can help create more energy, it can help space exploration and keep a person's heart beating. When people think of Plutonium the word nuclear bomb is usually the first thing to pop into their brain. Mostly people think about Hiroshima, Japan and the atomic bomb. This however is not always the case in the below paragraphs one will discover both sides to the story. Both the beneficial sides and the negative aspects to Plutonium. Though public has negative views about the dynamism of plutonium and its characteristics, Plutonium can be useful for more then just nuclear energy.
A University of California scientist discovered Pu #94 also known as Plutonium. This scientist was Glenn T Seaborg. The element Pu is the most inconstant element on the planet. When an element is inconstant that means that it is easily manipulated and changed. Plutonium is created when Uranium, another unstable or inconstant element, consumes a neutron. Plutonium has been found in 15 different forms. The mass number range from 232-246 and half-lives from 20 minutes to 76 million years (Bentor 2008). The half live is the time that it can take for an element to decay to half of its original value. Plutonium is best described as being a radioactive, silvery, metallic element. Jeremy Bernstein on page 171 his book Plutonium described it as, “Plutonium is so unusual as to approach the unbelievable. Under some conditions it can be nearly as hard and brittle as glass; under others, as soft as plastic or lead. It will burn and crumble quickly to powder when heated in air, or slowly disintegrate when kept at room temperature. It undergoes no less than five phase transitions between room temperature and its melting point. Strangely enough in two of its phases, plutonium actually contracts as it is being heated. It has no less than four...