I originally reviewed What Color Is Your Parachute? in five parts, which you can find here, here, here, here, and here if you would like to read the original comments. What Color Is Your Parachute? is the eighteenth of fifty-two books in The Simple Dollarâs series 52 Personal Finance Books in 52 Weeks.
Thallium is extremely soft, malleable and sectile enough to be cut with a knife at room temperature. It has a metallic luster that, when exposed to air, quickly tarnishes to a bluish-gray tinge, resembling lead. It may be preserved by immersion in oil. A heavy layer of oxide builds up on thallium if left in air.
203 Tl and 205 Tl are the only stable isotopes and 204 Tl is the most stable radioisotope with a half-life of 3.78 years. Thallium-202 (half life 12.23 days) can be made in a cyclotron while thallium-204 (half life 3.78 years) is made by the neutron activation of stable thallium in a nuclear reactor. The lead-201 can be produced in a cyclotron by the bombardment of thallium with protons or deuterons by the (p,3n) and (d,4n) reactions. 2  combined with sulfur or selenium and arsenic, thallium has been used in the production of high-density glasses that have low melting points in the range of 125 and 150 Â°C.