Francium

Francium: geological information

Very small amounts of francium are found in uranium ores. The longest lived isotope, ²²³Fr, a "daughter" of ²²⁷Ac, has a half-life of about 22 minutes. This is the only isotope of francium occurring in nature, but at most there is only 20-30 g of the element present in the earth's crust at any one time.

Abundances of francium in various environments

In this table of abundances, values are given in units of ppb (parts per billion; 1 billion = 10⁹), both in terms of weight and in terms of numbers of atoms. Values for abundances are difficult to determine with certainty, so all values should be treated with some caution, especially so for the less common elements. Local concentrations of any element can vary from those given here an orders of magnitude or so and values in various literature sources for less common elements do seem to vary considerably.

The chart below shows the log of the abundance (on a parts per billion scale) of the elements by atom number in our sun. Notice the "sawtooth" effect where elements with even atomic numbers tend to be more strongly represented than those with odd atomic numbers. This shows up best using the "Bar chart" option on the chart.

Log abundance (by atom numbers) in our sun

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