Talk:Radon

format

Article changed over to new Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements format by maveric149. Elementbox converted 19:37, 10 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 18:59, 10 July 2005).

Information Sources

Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Radon. Additional text was taken directly from USGS Periodic Table - Radon the Elements database 20001107 (via dict.org), and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org). Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the main page and Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

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Good Article Nomination

While this article does have a good amount of relevant information, there are several places where references are needed to back up evidence, and as such, its not quite ready for GA status. Its not far off though, so I'm putting it on hold until these things can be fixed.

1. Bluelinks need to be added to the 'Applications' section.
2. More references need to be added for the more 'non-standard' knowledge, such as death potential in the lead paragraph, and most if not all of the Applications and History sections.
3. 'Radon therapy' section is already mentioned in 'Applications'; this only needs to be mentioned once.

Here is my generic GA review of the article:

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is well written.

   a (prose): b (structure): c (MoS): d (jargon):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (inline citations): c (reliable): d (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

5. It is stable.

   

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

   a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):

• Failed due to lack of progress with problems stated above. Smomo 22:40, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

the Name Radon

Guys -

One thing. I was on Marie Curie's wiki page and it said that she named two elements - polonium and radium. In this article it says that someone else named radium. Who can verify?

Trimming

Aside from the additions over the years by people promoting different remediation practices, hormesis, etc., the sections on occurrence, health risks, and mitigation all seem unnecessarily large. They all have their own articles anyway, where much of this information is duplicated, so I will be trimming these sections in particular with prejudice. Reconrabbit 15:45, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Image?

The radon article still doesn't have an image of radon. However, i may have found a picture of radon. HAt 12:28, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

What in that picture is radon? And what is the rest? We can only take pictures with suitable licenses anyway. --mfb (talk) 13:03, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

TBH I don't even believe that's radon, just look at it! Thats obviously a solid! HAt 13:08, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I would assume, based on chemistry and the image, that the bubbles are the radon, as decay products being liberated from the solid. But assuming or analyzing someone else's novel image aren't really viable approaches for encyclopedia content. DMacks (talk) 15:06, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Also for your information the promethium(III) chloride page has an image that has the same source as the 'radon' picture. HAt 13:10, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

A "non-free" image can be used even contrary to its license in extremely limited cases. That PmCl₃ image is documented as meeting Non-free content criteria. DMacks (talk) 15:06, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

This may count as an image of Radon: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Radon_decay_in_a_cloud_chamber.jpg (source: https://www.nuledo.com/en/our-products/) It visibly shows the decay of Radon gas in a cloud chamber ~2026-44967 (talk) 05:36, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Picture is already in the article later on. It's not at the top because it is not immediately obvious to a viewer what they are looking at... Ideally it should be pretty obvious that the subject of an image is 1. a gas and 2. visible, and radon is hard to get in quantity for either of those things to be seen.. -- Reconrabbit 14:36, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Spectrum

What's the reason that the spectra of Radon and Radium are nearly identical (just adding a few lines to get from Radium to Radon)? Compare Radon spectrum vs. Radium spectrum. Shouldn't the lines be completely different? Renerpho (talk) 00:33, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I've asked again on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry#Radon and Radium spectral lines, with some additional comments. I suggest we discuss it there. Renerpho (talk) 01:16, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Both works are original research according to their descriptions. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:31, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

What the Thayer reference says about Radon.

The source

• Thayer, John S. (2010). "Relativistic Effects and the Chemistry of the Heavier Main Group Elements". Relativistic Methods for Chemists. Challenges and Advances in Computational Chemistry and Physics. Vol. 10. p. 80. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9975-5_2. ISBN 978-1-4020-9974-8.

was mentioned in a recent edit summary between @DMacks and @The Young Prussian. The source says:

• No compounds in the +8 state have been reported or even claimed. RnF8 is predicted to be unstable towards loss of fluorine [214]. By analogy with Xe, the most likely Rn(VIII)compound to be isolated would probably be Ba2RnO6, the radon analog of barium perxenate.

In my opinion the notable sentence is the first one, not the last one. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:40, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. I was only focused on the spelling of the chemical. This area of chemistry isn't my specialty. DMacks (talk) 03:18, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

In any case: per the Red Book (p. 338) the anion name for Rn is radonate. (For Ra it is radate.) Double sharp (talk) 07:25, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Notes on GA

I was trying for a long while to bring this article to GA status but gave up after a lot of searching around for subpar sources and getting stuck in certain places. @Keresluna, I would pay special attention to the following section headings where I felt there needed to be more citations or more information in general:

• Industrial production
• Inhalation and smoking
• Absorption and ingestion from water

The latter two I wrote "needed review"; I leave it to you. Because of how heavily involved I was in writing the article I don't think I could give an impartial review. -- Reconrabbit 15:34, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

I withdrew the nomination. I do not think I will have time for this during the summer. Sorry for this. Keres🌕Luna ^edits! 17:17, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Okay, understood. Maybe I will nominate it myself once I am done with the rabbits. -- Reconrabbit 17:27, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Misleading image?

@Arònel123 and Double sharp: I'm not so sure about using File:Radon86.jpg as the image for radon. As the caption says, the blue-green glow comes from the phosphorescence of zinc sulfide irradiated by radon. Of course, since (neutral) radon is invisible, we're only seeing zinc sulfide here. My biggest concern is that this image could very easily mislead readers to think radon glows green, especially when the image doesn't have a caption in the article. In reality, radon (or more specifically, when ionized in a vacuum environment like a gas-discharge lamp) glows magenta/pink according to its blue-and-red-dominated emission spectrum. There's also this website cited in the Wikipedia article that mentions solid radon glowing yellow to orange to red (speculating here---I think it's due to thermal radiation from its intense radioactivity?).

With that being said, I prefer this image be removed. Any other radioactive element like tritium or radium can cause the zinc sulfide tube to glow green like in this image. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 22:58, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

I do not think there is ever going to be a good way to represent Rn such that it would be appropriate to depict in the infobox. It is simply infeasible to get a quantity of radon large enough that could be visualized in a useful way (excitation) as far as I know. One day I'd like to bring this article to good-level, at least clearing up all the obvious problems like uncited or confusing sections, but getting a good infobox image is not in my plans. -- Reconrabbit 23:59, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

I also don't think you could ever practicably get it. (No one is going to repeat the melting point measurement of Ramsay and Gray in 1909 due to the radiation hazard, I imagine.) Some things just aren't going to get pictures and I think this is one of them. Double sharp (talk) 07:02, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Admittedly, the photos for actinium are also severely indirect as quite literally,what you see there is not the element, but rather the glow from the element.(astatine is also like this,howver as astatine is probably wayyy to radioactive to find a better photo of I allow it.)And even the promethium image...the one at wikiproject element photos is according to the source, a thermal gradient,and the infobox photo is a solution of promethium ions. Arònel123 (talk) 13:32, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Also, I have just added a caption to the image to hopefully avoid confusion. Arònel123 (talk) 13:43, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I tried to add a caption but had trouble with that. The purpose of the infobox image is to show what the pure element looks like. I do not see it as useful to show a reader at the first look that "this element looks like a glowing liquid" if that is not the case. As I have read At-211 is eluted in nitric acid; a reader is looking at glowing nitric acid and assuming that is astatine. Same with promethium - the image is an aqueous solution with an organic ligand, so clearly not the pure element. Perhaps these images are useful later on with context and captions but not as the first thing a reader sees. -- Reconrabbit 13:52, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

by added a caption for radon, I meant i added a caption like 3 seconds before I replied Arònel123 (talk) 13:54, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

btw I agree with you Arònel123 (talk) 13:55, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

i think they suffice *if* with captions Arònel123 (talk) 13:56, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

for adding captons I just add "|image caption=(insert what u want)" to the infobox Arònel123 (talk) 14:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Weird, I don't see the caption in the infobox, but I do see it in the source code. Hydrogen's infobox does have a caption, but I can't find it in its source code though. I'll need to look more into this... Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 16:39, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Aha. You can edit the caption over here Template:Infobox element/symbol-to-top-image-caption. I have no clue why the element infobox caption is a global parameter on a totally different page, that's so weird. Nrco0e (talk • contribs) 16:45, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeah thats so weird I wonder why? Arònel123 (talk) 01:25, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Admittedly, the photos for actinium are also severely indirect as quite literally,what you see there is not the element, but rather the glow from the element.(astatine is also like this,howver as astatine is probably wayyy to radioactive to find a better photo of I allow it.)And even the promethium image...the one at wikiproject element photos is according to the source, a thermal gradient,and the infobox photo is a solution of promethium ions. Arònel123 (talk) 13:38, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

(sorry I accidentally duplicated it Idk how) Arònel123 (talk) 13:45, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I think you forgot that this comes from a book (https://archive.org/details/matterlapp00lapp/page/n3/mode/2up) where there is real radon in the tube; the blue color is from the radioactive radon, and only radon glows like that. I3rwiiwjiwji (talk) 21:33, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

As the book states, the radon is not glowing. The zinc sulphide is glowing because of the ionizing radiation. It is not sealed in the tube. -- Reconrabbit 00:16, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Apparently the photo has just been deleted... Arònel123 (talk) 03:25, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Also when reading the book it seems to say notthat they coated the inside of the tube that was filled with radon with zinc sulfide which made it glow,it seems like they filled a tube with radon and put it on a soft of surface made of zinc sulfide which proceeded to glow...if it is *that* strong...yeah tritium or Radium are nowhere near radioactive enough to do that and zinc sulfide does not grow blue...I suspect that it is from the alpha particles ionizing the atoms... Arònel123 (talk) 03:36, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

https://books.google.com/books?id=T0Iiv0BJ1E0C&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false This book states that radon changes color when in solid form. I can only assume this is based on the 1909 experiments by Ramsay and Gray but they even state that the color varies due to the composition of the glass it's kept inside. I'm just repeating what Double sharp said but it's extremely unlikely we'll ever see solid or even liquid radon (which is colorless anyway). -- Reconrabbit 13:30, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

uhh being colorless does not make it disqualified being invisible does (ln2 for example is colorless) and I'm pretty sure that plasma ain't colorless) Arònel123 (talk) 07:27, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

That's true about colorless liquids, my mistake. I don't know what you are calling a plasma. -- Reconrabbit 13:29, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

specifically I would not be very surprised if the blue part is plasma though it might also just be straight up the ionization of air and anyway I don't see how a misleading image makes sense here I mean for astatine we literally use glowing nitric acid for the infobox the astatne is not what you see there what you do see there is just straight up the ionization of air. Arònel123 (talk) 07:40, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Probably nobody has paid too much attention to it yet, that image was added to At just 2 months ago. -- Reconrabbit 12:15, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Makes sense, considering noone ever expected a image to ever exist, though I am surprised as astatine is frequently checked thanks to it's popularity as "the rarest element"...though i seriously have absolutely no idea how the original radon image is better than the infobox replacement...which is just the spectral lines for radon...and either way the actinium image has been there for ages and is similar. Arònel123 (talk) 12:29, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I mean,the actinium image has been here since 2020... Arònel123 (talk) 04:02, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I assume that is a nitric acid solution as well? -- Reconrabbit 14:14, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Possibly Arònel123 (talk) 03:30, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Though the image in the infobox for Actinium-225 is actinium nitrate...I know nothing wih certainty abut the image in the actinium infobox itself... Arònel123 (talk) 03:32, 1 May 2026 (UTC)