Americium

Americium was founded in? AMERICA! This element was named after it's founding country, and also because it is just below Europium on the Periodic Table- and Europium was named after Europe. It was first discovered in 1944 by Seaborg, James and Morgan at the metallurgical laboratory at the University of Chicago. It is not a natural element, and was discovered as a by-product of plutonium processing.

However, Americium is highly radioactive, and must be stored and handled very carefully because of this. It appears a silvery-white metal, and has a similar density to lead. It is used most commonly in smoke detectors- one gram supplies enough energy for more than 3 million detectors. It tarnishes slowly at room temperature.