Talk:Caesium

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Article changed over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements format by User:maveric149. Elementbox converted 12:08, 10 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 12:30, 4 June 2005).

Contents

[edit] Information Sources

Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Cesium. Additional text was taken directly from USGS Cesium Statistics and Information, USGS Periodic Table - Cesium, and from the Elements database 20001107, and Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913). Other information was obtained from the sources listed on the main page but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

[edit] Talk

someone more knowledgable about these things please consider the information at: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/faculty/nelson/cesium/cesium_color.html

[edit] color

"Caesium, however, is pale gold in colour" - Shouldn't that be "Caesium, however, is caesium in colour ". The only element I know of that's gold is, well, Gold.  ;).

It would be nice to know just exactly why cesium is goldish in color. Apart from cesium, copper, and gold, metals are blackish ot whitish silver, no? Some with a bluish hue. But why are these 3 elements so differently colored? Why are there no greenish metals for example? It's probably something about their absorption spectra. But I see no underlying factor why most metals should preferentially absorb in the long-wave part of the visual spectrum, and a few in the short-wave part. Dysmorodrepanis 11:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Bismuth is vaguely pink and I understand some relativistic cause (to do with the speed of electrons in 1s orbitals) underlies this, like the particular (gold!) colour of gold and the liquid state of mercury. No greenish metals appear presumably because the relativistic or overlapping-orbitals mechanisms must, to meet the requirements of the human eye, together see to the absorption of red and blue light to reflect green and maybe that is just too rare given the availability of only 100-odd elements to experimenters. Dajwilkinson 00:13, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Cool! Thanks! Dysmorodrepanis 15:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] which isotope

I know one isotope is used as a source for cancer therapy (along with Co-60 and a few others). WHich is it? Pakaran. 22:12, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Cesium 137.

It would be nice if articles like this included a link to a page explaining how the pronounciation guide works. ChrisLawson 13:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling: caesium vs. cesium

Why is this page called 'Caesium', while all the sources you quote say have Cesium in their names? Shouldn't we also name our article cesium, and put a redirect from caesium? Cederal 16:48, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would say it is best to leave the title as is, seeing as how that is the approved spelling.

It seems to me that the "approved spelling" criterion is in violation of the "use common names" policy. "Cesium" is in fact more common than "Caesium". [1]. Nohat 23:58, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The IUPAC name for the element is "caesium". The use common names part of the MoS is so that we have article titles like caffeine instead of 3,7-dihydro-1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione. If you move this, you're going to open a whole can of worms with aluminium/aluminum and sulfur/sulphur. -- DrBob 02:23, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But also, according to the article, "cesium" is an approved spelling variant. Gene Nygaard 04:14, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This arguement is futile. The best and most obvious solutionis to leave the page where it is and change every occurance of 'cesium' to the more correct 'caesium'. Google results are inadequate: everyone knows American English is more popular, while International English is more correct in being universal. It's really too bad that Americans have skewed such a wonderful language. --Zippanova 16:38, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

You don't have to get so emotional over different spellings. "Wonderful," especially when used to describe a language, is completely arbitrary. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.126.5.184 (talk • contribs) .

The UK spelling being more "proper" is a crock. Do you suggest we also change magnesium, xenon, helium, platinim lanthanum to magnaesium, xaenon, haelium, platinium and lanthanium? --Paul2505 08:26, 13 August 2005

The Norman conquest of Britain all but destroyed the English language. Anything the Amercans do (whether it's attempting to undo damage or adding more idiosyncrasies) is inconsequential when compared to what has already been done.
That's laughable. Old English can hardly be described as "the English language." How could something (the Norman conquest) that contributed so much to what English is now "destroy" "the English language," when in fact it (the Normal conquest) altered Old English to *create* "the English lanuage"? It's symmantics, I know, but I can't let people get away with twisting their words to get away with false logic. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.126.5.184 (talk • contribs) .
Darrien 13:36, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
The Norman conquest of England created the English language. Anything before that was Anglo-Saxon. --Carnildo 03:54, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
No, the Norman conquest of England created Middle English, which in turn supplanted Old English. Anglo-Saxon is just another name for Old English.
Darrien 21:30, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

If using the UK spellings is so important, why arent the articles for Fetus, Pediatrics and Anemea not Titeled "Foetus" "Paediatrics" and "Anaemia". In fact, shouldnt this whole site be called "Wikipaedia" instead of Wikipedia??? -Guest


The results of a little Googling may be interesting:

                                                  cesium/caesium
                          cesium  caesium  cæsium  ratio
                          651,000 199,000  826       3.27  
site:.au                    9.180   8,260            1.11
site:.ca                    8,340     641           13.0
site:.nz                      173     255            0.68
site:.uk                    5,790  14,800            0.39
site:.us                    5,090   7,310            0.70
site:.za                      224     232            0.97
[English language]        377,000 142,000  291       2.65

site:.edu                  44,500   3,530   14      12.6
site:.gov                  92,800   1,720           54.0
site:.com                 164,000  63,900  131       2.57
site:.mil                   5,950      35          170
site:.org                  97,000  14,700   54       6.60

site:nist.gov               4,070      10          407
site:bipm.org                   5      15            0.33
site:harvard.edu            7,180     398    2      18.0
site:npl.co.uk                  5     125            0.040

site:.de                   15,000   9,690    3       1.55
site:.fr                    7,740   1,090   69       7.10
site:.no                    1,670     340    3       4.91
site:.jp                    6,600     723            9.13

Gene Nygaard 04:14, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can I convince you, of all people, with a hypothetical googlefight "u vs g/mol", that the prevailing use of an equally accepted variant should have little influence on settling on another as per the suggestions from an international body of standardization? Femto 12:55, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Convince me? I can't even figure out what you are trying to say. Gene Nygaard 22:42, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
On the one hand, the unified atomic mass unit is the most widely used and approved variant of writing things, yet we change it to "g/mol" (which I think is good, by the way). On the other hand, at xenon you reverted "caesium" back to "cesium" in which was almost an edit war. In a scientific context such as these articles, either variant is perfectly valid English, in any flavor. But the single preferred IUPAC spelling, if you're not strictly bound by other style rules, is the UK "caesium" (they do swallow "sulfur" in turn). Usage statistics and approved spelling variants or not, I think Wikipedia as a whole should try to uniformly follow IUPAC as much as we try to follow BIPM. Even where localized spellings would be more appropriate, it's good practice to use a piped link cesium to avoid a redirection. Femto 14:00, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What's the relevance? None of the Wikipedia articles I edited used either "u" nor the "unified atomic mass unit". See http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec05.html#5.1.3
Furthermore, in that case there is an additional factor other than whatever rules any standards agency promulgates—there is also our explicit, self-limiting claim in the footer of those tables that "SI units are used". We can indeed limit ourselves to one choice among the acceptable alternatives. While doing so is certainly an issue that is appropriate for debate, the fact is that as it stands now, that claim is made in those footers.
Since the units which were used (namely, "amu") are NOT even on the list of units acceptable for use with SI, it was quite reasonable for me to change those to the SI g/mol.
Like you say yourself, "either variant is perfectly valid English". That justifies a reversion, as I did in xenon. In other words, if either is acceptable, you need a better reason to change it than personal preference. If you just do it on the basis of personal preference, you deserve to be reverted.
In the spelling of cesium, that spelling is accepted by the IUPAC, which apparently has taken the lead in this area. That has to have some meaning. You are interpreting it as if that were meaningless. The IUPAC don't have any plenary authority, but I'm not claiming at this point that any other standards agency sets any contrary standards in this area. I don't need to. IUPAC has accepted "cesium". This may well be a political decision, a facing of the reality shown by the Google statistics I cited. They probably decided, quite reasonably and understandably, not to hinge their credibility on this issue. Gene Nygaard 15:13, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The relevance of "cesium" being accepted as an equally valid American English variant, for me, as an European Wikipedia user, is none. My point is, "u" is accepted within the SI and is widely used, yet you made a choice to go against common use but with a standard. IUPAC suggests an international spelling-neutral naming standard, and to deviate from that would be the personal preference here. I couldn't see a better reason to change something than to avoid local spellings. Femto 16:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Speaking of relevance,
  1. Can you show me anything specifically stating that it is only acceptable in "American English" from the IUPAC?
  2. Even if you can, my Google statistics clearly show that this variation is NOT specific to "American English". There is nothing "local" about it. Not even anything limited to "English" about it, in any flavor of English. Even the web sites in Germany and France use "cesium" more often than "caesium". Gene Nygaard 17:08, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No, I can't. Divide the English language like you want, the fact remains that some people use aluminium/caesium/sulphur, while others use aluminum/cesium/sulfur, neither of who are willing to use all of the other's spellings. But they all can agree on a unified compromise like aluminium/caesium/sulfur as suggested by IUPAC. Femto 18:42, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Edited the Caesium page to change everything to Cesium. Would have moved, but cannot. I agree that Cesium should be used because it is most widely used. I have yet to EVER see Caesium except on british sites and wikipedia. It more seems like UK is the oddball here and not the US this time.

above unsigned post by Ergzay.
Reverted. Please don't restart disruptive spelling disputes. The situation has been quite stable, let it be. Vsmith 04:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How did all we "cesium" advocates get corralled by the "caesium" people so we're beating around the logic bush, are just playing their games, and got manoeuvred into group-think paralysis? This is an American Web site that uses American english. Period. The first time I linked to "Cesium" and saw the link had been redirected (WTF?), I questioned my own sanity. I looked up cesium in my American encyclopedia (World Book) and read some NIST papers. Even all my spell checkers flag "caesium" (so I had to double-check it as I typed this message). The objective in all writings—especially technical writing—is to communicate without confusion. This Web site needs consistency across its articles. If someone who speaks British-English adds an article using British spellings, bless their hearts for the contribution. But the British spellings must eventually be converted to American conventions. Reverting articles back to British spellings would be simple childish vandalism. Someone with sufficient Wiki stature needs to fix this and be done with it. Greg L 17:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Actually, Wikipedia convention is not to favor any national variety of English; see WP:MOS#National varieties of English for the gory details. Sorry, I should have explained that to you before. Melchoir 18:23, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is being politically correct. The practical reality is that Wikipedia articles contain many, many articles that mention "cesium" and which provide links to an article titled "caesium." Notwithstanding Wikipedia's P.C. poslition that ‘no point of view, or position on a topic, or cultural practice is more meritorious than another’, having different spellings for an important noun (and an article's title) throughout Wikipedia is inconsistent and simply detracts from Wikipedia's value. Cesium should either be spelled one way or the other, not both.
I recommend a reading of WP:LAME before anybody goes much further with this. We've been there.Steve 03:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I recommend reading Technical writing. Political correctness is a poor excuse for accepting confusion in Wiki articles.
    Greg L 04:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Such confusion results from failure to define and use standards. Sometimes, not everyone accepts proposed standards. British spellings are accepted by a large minority of English users. It would be wrong to completely ignore them. Generally in such cases, the obvious thing to do is note the majority usage and notation (whatever that is), and then (if the minority is a large one) to note it secondarily. Here, I think cesium should indeed be the article name. As also anesthesia (not anaesthesia) and hemoglobin (not haemoglobin).Steve 06:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I took a look at the article on Technical writing. Wow--- it was in need of a surprising amount of editing. :). It's still not pretty. Steve 06:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Fight!!! Seriously though, cesium may be more common (one reason being that Americans have more scientific influence that any other nation, so cesium would naturally occur more frequently - even in non-English speaking nations), but the fact is that it is recommended by the appropriate international body to spell it caesium (maybe due to to historical reasons: I for as hell don't know and I also don't care). The proper people to argue with would be with them. Just accept it that caesium is the convention. From the UK vs. US perspective both sides should be dignified enough to accept comprimises. Krea 19:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I have a book Published in London that contains a periodic table with the spelling "cesium" so therefore I conclude that "cesium" is used in both countries. The Spelling Cesium is used by the Los Alamos website the main resource for this page. This should be titled "cesium" the poper AMERICAN way of spelling it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And as far as sulpher and aluminium go, they should, in my opinion, be changed to sulfer and aluminum

Except that no one spells it "sulfer" or "sulpher." If you want to appear as a credible contributor to a spelling debate, you should at least use spell check. --Pyrochem 05:55, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh dear, how sad. Rather than so many people blowing their own trumpet, or their own country's trumpet, perhaps we could address this issue in the right forum- either in WP policy on naming conventions for chemicals, or encourage IUPAC to change the name (they did for sulfur). Me, I'm happy to follow IUPAC as it's an international body, not tied to one dominant country. If/when they change the word, I'll go with it. Krea has it right- accept compromises; we're a democracy, not a dictatorship, and dignified is the word. Freestyle-69 (talk) 00:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] disputed

Oh come on, there are many stronger bases than hydroxides! LLNL isn't as smart as I'd like. lysdexia 10:00, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Actually, hydroxides are the strongest bases, since they contain the most electropositive elements.

Untrue. Hydroxides can be compounds of a wide range of elements including not particularly electropositive ones (eg copper (II) hydroxide), which are amphoteric rather than strong bases. The most basic hydroxides are the fully dissociated, uncrystallisable ones where the cation is a large complex cation, which need not in fact contain electropositive elements at all. Tetrabutylammonium hydroxide is a stronger base than CsOH and contains C, N and H in the cation! Lysdexia is right that (in nonaqueous environments) there are H+ acceptors stronger than any hydroxide (eg carbanions), but he/she should have included examples and refs. AGC.

[edit] Latin phonetics

Removed from the page:

though it goes against Latin phonetics

...apparently in reference to the English pronunciation of the word. First off it doesn't seem relevant (what do Latin phonetics have to do with English pronunciation?) and second off it's inaccurate anyway (The "Caes-" in "Caesar", while not from the same root, was pronounced the same in Latin, /kais/, and the same in English, /si:z/, as this word, so it's not like something inconsistent is happening).

There are exceptions to everything, but the overwhelmingly common pronunciation of "ae" is pronounced like "aye". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.126.5.184 (talk • contribs) .

I'm sure there was a reason it was put in though, so if it can be better explained I won't object to putting it back. —Muke Tever 00:39, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Making Caesium

It can be made by electolysis of CsCl or by reacting CsCl with Ca at a temperature where Cs boils off similar to the Potassium entry.

According to http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Cs/key.html, Cs is soluble in molten CsCl (like K in KCl). Therefore, the electrolysis method would give low yields. Instead of Ca, it would probably be better to use a stronger reducing agent such as Na. --Pyrochem 05:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

My understanding is the electrolysis method is also done above the Cs boiling point. Also, Ca is about the same reactivity as Na, but has a much higher boiling point, thus using Ca would result in less contamination of Cs by evaporation. In fact the Ca method is what is used commercially. Jokem (talk) 13:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bromine?

The article currently states that Gallium, Francium, and Mercury are the only three elements that are liquid at or near room temperature. From looking at other wikipedia articles (and high school science classes) it seems to me that we are forgeting Bromine?

Has it been a lie all this time that bromine is liquid at room temperature?

I would go ahead and change it...but I'd like to make sure that I'm right. Would someone please confirm this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.50.43.220 (talk • contribs) .

The article specifically narrows the characterization to metals, not elements, so bromine shouldn't be a problem here. Femto 12:08, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I am going to add Bromine, but with the caveat of it being a non metal. Jokem (talk) 13:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Curious

Why are we using caesium instead of caesium instead on cesium? Look at what the other languages have:

Bosniak: Cezijum
Catalan: Cesi
Czech: Cesium
Corsican: Cesiu
Welsh: Cesiwm
Spanish: Cesio
Esperanto: Cezio
French: Césium
Galician: Cesio (elemento)
Croation: Cezij
Ido: Cesio
Italian: Cesio (elemento)
Latvian: Cēzijs
Lithuanian: Cezis
Hungarian: Cézium
Dutch: Cesium
Norwegian (both dialects): Cesium
Polish: Cez
Portuguese: Césio

So if we really want an international spelling, we should go with cesium.Cameron Nedland 18:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The page is at Caesium as it is official policy. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry)#Element_names for clarification. I think it best to prevent this talk page from becoming like the pages of arguments over where Aluminium should be. Atomic1609 01:22, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad.Cameron Nedland 14:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caesium reaction with water

does ceasium react badly with water? i read that it does but im confused!?!?i guess in hot water it would becuse of its low melting point...? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.217.219.38 (talk) 02:03, 5 March 2007

Alkali metals are highly reactive and react violently in water (very fast and very hot); the further down the periodic table you go, the more violent the reaction. Squids'and'Chips 22:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Caesium SHOULD react violently with water and I have seen a video of this happening. However, Theodore Gray (at www.periodictabletable.com) has been trying to react pure caesium with water for a video and the results have so far been disappointing.Fork me (talk) 17:03, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Death by cesium?

is it possibly that you could die by being exposed to a cesium reaction? in a book i read some soccer player is murdered with it… Milldog 93 22:37, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Possible, yes. Practicable, not so much. See here for visual demonstration. Duke Leto (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Not so sure about using that as a demonstration. An avid viewer told be the other day that it was faked. Possibly by using larger quantities of the metal above caesium in the periodic table —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.248.87 (talk) 02:07, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Caesium 137 decay

The article claims caesium 137 is used as a gamma-source, but in the bar on the right indicates that caesium 137 beta decays to a stable isotope. These claims are in contradiction, which is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.14.228.89 (talk) 17:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disparity with Francium article

This article lists the estimated amount of Francium in the Earth's crust at any one time as 550g, while the Francium article lists it as 30g. I'm not gonna take a guess as to which is right but I'm pretty sure one must be wrong. --Duke Leto (talk) 11:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Francium

Aren't the MP and BP for Francium only estimated? I did not think it was possible to get enough together to test it. Jokem (talk) 13:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cesium(III)

A "slow motion edit war" has been going on for months over the inclusion of Cs(III) in this article, as well as the +3 oxidation state for Cs in other articles about the periodic table and oxidation states. The paragraph in question is as follows:

There is an account that caesium, reacting with fluorine, takes up more fluorine than it stoichiometrically should.(Klaus Moock, "Indications of Cesium in a Higher Oxidation State" (1989), Angewandte Chemie International 28,12:1676–8. Correspondence to Konrad Seppelt, Institut für Anorganische und Analytische Chemie der Freien Universität, Berlin.) It is possible that, after the salt Cs+F− has formed, the Cs+ ion, which has the same electronic structure as elemental xenon, can, like xenon, be oxidised further by fluorine and form traces of a higher fluoride such as CsF3, analog of XeF2.

IMO this paragraph should be removed. I looked up the reference given, papers citing it, and any related papers I could find. First, the paper by Moock does not make the claim that it is being used for in the paragraph above. It clearly states that the early reports on the preparation of CsF3 were proven to be false; that later results showed that, under certain matrix isolation conditions, a compound could be isolated but it was Cs+F3− (therefore with Cs(I), not Cs(III)). The paper closes with the statement "the isolation of a Cs3+ species has yet to be reported". Now, the core of the paper is about electrochemical evidence of a possible Cs3+ transient species, although oxidation of the solvent or other species in solution remained a possibility. This is an interesting experiment, but as far as I could find, no one else has confirmed it, and I haven't seen much mention of it by secondary or tertiary sources. Therefore, while mentioning the experiment is verifiable, I think including it may be giving undue weight to an isolated observation that has not been proven conclusively. If it is included at all, it should be presented accurately (i.e., this is an electrochemical observation of an oxidation process that may be attributable to oxidation to Cs3+, but no Cs3+ compounds have ever been isolated) but it does not justify adding Cs3+ to the periodic table, articles about oxidation states, etc., because these focus on oxidation states of species that can be isolated. --Itub (talk) 15:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree. the sum of the first three ionization energies of Cs are nearly 5600 kJ/mol, far more than could be gained in lattice energy from the formation of Cs(F–)3. However, the CsF lattice is fairly open, and could easily accomodate F2 molecules as an addition compound. I'm even willing to believe in Cs(F3–), but not in CsIII given the current state of chemical science. Physchim62 (talk) 19:43, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I have a chance to look at the paper now: it is an excellent piece of experimental work, but I think the authors have been over-enthusiastic in their conclusions. In particular, their hypothesis of CsIII appears to be (IMHO) unfalsifiable, which may well explain why no one seems to have taken the work any further (there would be no point). The question of possible solvent oxidation seems to be dealt with by ad hoc explanations, despite the fact that the ionization energy of acetonitrile (the solvent used in the experiments) is 1177 kJ/mol (Source: NIST), roughly half the value of the second ionization energy of caesium (2234 kJ/mol). Physchim62 (talk) 16:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)