Talk:Isotopes of radon
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chemical and "normal" physical properties
editshouldn't there also be a section in which the "regular" physical and chemical properties are outlined (boiling point, melting point etc. etc) 194.53.253.51 (talk) 09:06, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, and comes the question that, since radon is an inert gas, how do you know that there is any of it except for its radioactivity? And the second question, is there a procedure that permits us to say categorically that there are no stable isotopes of 86Rn Radon?WFPM (talk) 13:09, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- The main properties are at radon, though this is very late. You would be able to tell the presence of an inert gas in the same way as one would for He, Ne, and Ar; besides Rn would not be all that inert. And if there were stable isotopes of Rn, it would be quite extraordinary that stars had not synthesised them; the ___location of the beta-stability line cuts right through the known isotopes, which are not stable at all. The only possibility would be nuclear isomers like 180mTa, which is also really quite unlikely. Double sharp (talk) 01:11, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Representative Isotopic Composition / Mole Fraction
edit222Rn is listed as "trace" in the table.
Shouldn't it be listed as > 99% (or > 0.99)? I.E. it may occur as trace quantities in nature, but most of what is found is 222Rn. Sorry, I don't have the specific percentage. Keelec (talk) 17:49, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
- Because none of the Rn isotopes occur in anything more than traces, and those are dependent on which parent isotopes exactly happen to be there. If you have a sample with lots of thorium but almost no uranium, you will have more thoron (220Rn) than radon (222Rn). Now thoron has a low half-life (almost a minute) and so the problem is exacerbated as it has not enough time to diffuse uniformly like radon can; by the time it gets to the far corners of the room (speaking imprecisely of course), you will not have thoron, but rather its daughters. So the relative abundances fluctuate wildly depending on where exactly you are measuring them. Double sharp (talk) 15:42, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
External links modified
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- Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080923135135/http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/amdc/nubase/Nubase2003.pdf to http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/amdc/nubase/Nubase2003.pdf
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Unstable nuclide with N/Z = 1.5
edit215Rn (half-life = 2.3 µs) is the second least stable known nuclide with N:Z = 3:2, being second only to 5He. The next least stable is 280Cn (half-life = 10 µs). 129.104.244.178 (talk) 20:24, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
Are alpha decays of 223Rn and 224Rn predicted?
editConsidering the short alpha half-life of 222Rn, I would be very astonished if they are not. 129.104.241.214 (talk) 02:56, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
- The partial alpha half-life of 223Rn is 3.65×108 seconds (11.5 years, doi 10.1103/PhysRevC.95.014319). Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 07:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks! As a reminder for the future in case that I forget it, this is only a calculated value. 129.104.241.214 (talk) 04:09, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
It is a pity that the isotopes of At, Rn, Fr near beta-stability line are so alpha unstable
editDue to the extremely short alpha half-lives of nuclides in this region, beta decays have been so poorly studied for 212(m),213,214(m),216(m)At, 213,215,219,222Rn and 214(m),216(m),218(m)Fr. 2A04:CEC0:1088:EB77:D831:1EEE:AC25:2D1D (talk) 00:38, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
I just realized that 212Rn and 220Rn have very close alpha decay energy, but their half-lives differ a lot
edit212Rn has Qα = 6385.1 keV, and 220Rn has Qα = 6404.66 keV, so these two values are very close. But 212Rn is 25 times more stable than 220Rn. 129.104.241.181 (talk) 13:00, 28 November 2024 (UTC)
- Going past shell closures (here the magic number N = 126) normally causes alpha lifetimes to fall more than energy would predict. There are other examples e.g. Cf-252 has shorter life than Cf-250 though energy is smaller and N = 152 is there crossed. The differences are not large by the standards of alpha decay, but the trends for even-even isotopes are so consistent that they can be seen distinctly. 2601:441:8500:B870:9CE0:A911:5918:FA85 (talk) 23:58, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
Does 218Rn really occur in nature?
editIt can only occur as beta decay product of 218At, but is the beta decay of 218At really known? No data is present in NUBASE2020.
Pages that my get affected:
Template:Radium series/table. 129.104.244.178 (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
- There's information on this in the ENSDF file (they don't allow direct linking, but can be found easily enough). Decay was claimed detected (from the natural radium series) in 1949, but not verified in a 2019 experiment studying At-218 with similar sensitivity. ENSDF therefore listed the branching as 0.05(5)%, i.e. <0.1%, but Nubase chose not to copy this, probably because they regarded the very old results as unreliable (the 1949 article, in French, is paywalled). They most likely had good reason for this; older versions of Nubase did list the 0.1% estimate, which I removed previously. For now I leave it to you.
- I don't know if we have an agreed standard to mark isotopes as present naturally; I don't think there's an authoritative reference for it per se. A verifiable standard would require they be isotopes actually detected or their known decay products and I imagine Rn-218 currently fails to be a 'known' decay product of the radium series. 2601:441:8500:B870:9CE0:A911:5918:FA85 (talk) 23:37, 7 July 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the clarification! I think it is better to remove 218Rn from being natural in these pages, until future experiments confirm so. What's your opinion? 129.104.244.60 (talk) 07:43, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
- The half-life of 218Rn was given as 1.3(1) s in the 1949 article, which is inconsistent with the now-adopted value of 33.75 ms, but agrees very well with the 1.27 s half-life of 218At... (By the way, the author of the 1949 article himself didn't know how to explain the disagreement between the value of 1.3 s and that of 19 ms in the literature at that time which had been obtained by studying the alpha daughters of 230U). 129.104.244.60 (talk) 09:04, 10 July 2025 (UTC)
- Then I suppose it isn't reliable, and you could edit appropriately as I already said you might. Of course, At-218 is likely to have beta decay, given its high Q, but as of now we don't have the information.
- My large edit to Decay chain just made left this isotope alone deliberately. This is not an endorsement of its inclusion and you may still remove it in the same way that you had planned; as that page is not intended for theoretical decay modes no note need be added.
- Also, Template:Radium series/table largely duplicates information in Decay chain. I now see it is actually used on Uranium-238 (I had assumed it was just a draft) and given the utility of this, I would like to see the other two natural series given similar templates. It should be kept synchronized with the copy in Decay chain (not identical because it starts with californium, though probably some coding could be used to display it either way), with the same half-lives and sources; by the way your sum for the total decay energy is incorrect, I got 51.69 Mev from the start and end atomic weights, while you have 51.77 - this could be explained by double-counting the energy of transition of the Pa-234m isomer to the ground state. I see you have a source for all the historical names of isotopes and I believe I will copy this source on Decay chain (and wherever else it might be needed) though I have not seen it myself.
- In the meantime until you can reply again, I have replaced the template with my own copy of the decay chain. I of course expect that you will want to change this if you come back. 73.228.195.198 (talk) 03:31, 17 July 2025 (UTC)