What is the precalculated weight of a gram of plutonium at room temperature?

Answer 1

It may be that a gram of plutonium actually weighs a gram. But this stuff is, um, quirky. It likes to change phase, and that means a given volume of it will change volume - sometimes by as much as 25% or more. There are several allotropes of plutonium. What does this mean? Imagine trying to make a precise shape of this stuff so you could build, say, a weapon - and it changes volume on you in the middle of your work. Bummer. A change in volume is a change in density, but you knew that. Precalculaton of a weight of plutonium will have to take into account the differential densities (of the different phases) in some way so that the "workability" of this hazardous stuff can be optimized. The mechanism behind the phase changes is not completely understood. And with all these allotropes, and there are several of them, anyone fabricating anything with plutonium is going to have his hands full. Nothing like mixing it up, is there? No wonder we have to work at alloying the stuff to stabilize it as well as burn supercomputer time to model its behavior. A link is provided to the Wikipedia article on plutonium for further investigation.