What is Californium?
Californium is the element with atomic number 98 and an atomic symbol of Cf. It was named for California and the University of California at Berkeley, where it was discovered in 1950 by a team of researchers including Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T. Seaborg, Kenneth Street, Jr., and Stanley G. Thompson using the Berkeley cyclotron. Its atomic weight is 251. It has a whitish, silvery color and is classified as an actinoid. After the first group of naturally occurring actinoids was discovered in the period from 1789 to 1917, a second group was discovered synthetically between 1940 and 1961. This group is referred to as the transuranic actinoids, and californium was the sixth transuranic actinoid to be discovered. Although californium was first produced by bombarding curium with helium ions, it is now usually produced from beta decay of berkelium. Some of californium’s uses focus on its property of being a very strong emitter of neutrons, for example in its californium-252 isotope. A single micr
