Radium

Paper Summary:

This paper briefly discusses the way that radium was discovered and first used. It explains how the awareness of the dangers of exposure were non-existent at the time and how many of the original workers with the substance died from poisoning. The paper looks at the precautions taken these days and how the use of the substance has developed.

From the Paper:

"Radium, a pure metal, was discovered by the Polish chemist Marie Sklodowska Curie and her husband Peter, a French chemist, in 1898 from unrefined pitchblende, a material containing uranium (Gagnon 2004), or urarinite, in Joachimsthal, North Bohemia (Chemistry Operations 2003). Marie Curie observed that radium was more radioactive than uranium when they were separated. In 1911, she and Debiene isolated the pure metal through an amalgam of pure radium chloride, distilled in an atmosphere of hydrogen (Chemistry Operations). Seven tons of pitchblende yields 1 gram of radium. It belongs to the alkaline-earth family of metals that loses 1% of its activity only every 25 years. Lead is its final by-product in the long disintegration process (Chemical Operations). It is recommended that radium and minerals and materials containing radium should be exposed to the air to prevent radon from building up."

More papers on Radium:

• Essay # 28497 : "Early Days of X-rays"
• Essay # 52602 : "Madame Marie Curie: Early Martyr to the Atomic Age"
• Term Paper # 1837 : "The Life and Work of Marie Curie"

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