The unexpected addition of curium as a real-life sample has come with a bonus. The newly formed atoms are not long for this world. Curium-242, for example, has a 50-50% chance of making it to the six month mark. The death of a curium atom is a violent, brutish event comparale to a supernova at an atomic scale. The ejecta produced in that blast shoot what is in essence an atom of helium at the heady speed of 10,000 miles per second. Woe be he who gets in the way! If that someone happens to be a sister atom of curium the two unite to kick it up a notch to form berkelium, number 97 on the Table.

Berkelium is itself also radioactive, of course, but atoms of it formed in this way yield an isotope, berkelium-249, that has a pretty decent half life of 330 days, nearly a full year. This leaves the curious oddity of finding in these curium samples an ever increasing number of berkelium atoms. Those good with math will be able to compute the trajectory of the quantities of the various isotopes as a plotted line on a chart to show, for example, at which point in the future there will be the largest concentration of these atoms present. A rough calculation indicates that this will happen at some point in the next 5-10 years (ca. 2030) when some 1,000 attendees will be partying for team Bk-249 inside this little ampule!

Not for sale.