Appearance and Characteristics
Harmful effects:
Francium is highly radioactive.
Characteristics:
Francium is a heavy, unstable, radioactive metal with a maximum half-life of only 22 minutes. It has a low melting point (27 oC, 81 oF) and, if enough of it could be accumulated, it would be liquid in a warm room.
Francium is the second rarest element in the Earth’s crust, next to astatine. Less than thirty grams of francium exists on Earth at any given time.
Francium is the least electronegative of all the elements, therefore it should be the most chemically reactive alkali metal. Unfortunately, it is not available in sufficient quantities to show it reacting with water – it is made in tiny quantities in particle accelerators. In theory, its reaction with water would be more violent than cesium’s and very much more violent than sodium’s.
Francium has been studied most recently at Stony Brook University, New York. Scientists there trapped up to ten thousand francium atoms at a time using laser beams in a magnetic field in order to measure their properties.
Uses of Francium
Commercially, there are no uses for francium, due to its rarity and instability. It is used for research purposes only.
Francium Decay
Francium’s isotopes, with mass numbers ranging from 200 to 232, most commonly undergo alpha- or beta-decay.