Post-transition metal · element 84
Polonium
Discovered by Marie Curie. Famous for the wrong reasons.
Only <0.1% of people are Polonium. (estimated)
If you're Polonium
You are brilliant, dangerous, and remembered for the damage rather than the discovery. Intense company, and not for long.
Polonium is so radioactive that a gram glows blue and heats itself to 500 °C; Marie Curie named it after Poland.
How to get along with Polonium
Do
- Keep it brief and keep it honest.
- Respect the brilliance and the danger equally.
- Give them a purpose that isn't destruction.
Don't
- Don't stay too close too long.
- Don't forget who discovered them and why.
When it goes wrong: They glow, they heat, they harm. Distance is the only safe reaction.
Atomic profile
Every element is placed on six personality dimensions derived from its chemistry. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest element wins. How the scoring works
- Reactivity
- 6
- Sociability
- 4
- Stability
- 1
- Energy
- 2
- Rarity
- 9
- Warmth
- 4
Polonium in literature
- Mr. Hyde — Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
- Clytemnestra — Agamemnon, Aeschylus (458 BCE)
- Rogozhin — The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1869)
Characters from public-domain works, chosen for the same traits. Company, not a verdict.
Closest personalities
The elements whose profiles sit nearest to Polonium's. If you got Polonium, one of these was probably your runner-up.
Other post-transition metals
AlAluminiumGaGalliumInIndiumSnTinTlThalliumPbLeadBiBismuthNhNihoniumFlFleroviumMcMoscoviumLvLivermorium