WHAT IS RADIUM HISTORY OF RADIUM Uses of Radium 226

Radium was discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and
226?
First, radium is a chemical element
that once it is exposed to the air, it
oxidizes. When it does, it becomes to a
black color. Also, it is an alkalinE
EARTH METALS.
Radium 226 is an isotope
of radium. It is a adverse health effects.
radioactive substance in
nature and has a half-life
of 1600 years, just like
any radium isotope. It was
discovered by Pierre Curie
and Marie Curie while
researching on an uranium
ore.
During 1920's it was injected to treat illness.
her husband Pierre Curie on 21 December 1898, in a However, it just led people to get more
uraninite (pitchblende) sample in Jáchymov. While malignant diseases. This is one of the reason
studying the mineral earlier, the Curies removed
uranium from it and found that the remaining material
why Marie Curie died; she exposed herself to
was still radioactive. In July 1898 while studying
radiation, causing her to get aplastic anemia.
Radium was once an additive in products such
pitchblende they isolated an element similar to bismuth
which turned out to be polonium. They then isolated a as toothpaste, hair creams, and even food
radioactive mixture consisting mostly of two items due to its supposed curative powers.
components: compounds of barium, which gave a Such products soon fell out of vogue and were
brilliant green flame color, and unknown radioactive prohibited by authorities in many countries
compounds which gave carmine spectral lines that had
after it was discovered they could have serious
never been documented before. The Curies found the
radioactive compounds to be very similar to the barium
compounds, except that they were less soluble. This made Now, it is used to produce radon, a radioactive
it possible for the Curies to isolate the radioactive gas used to treat some type of cancer and other
compounds and discover a new element in them. The diseases.
Curies announced their discovery to the French Academy Radium was also mixed with flourescent zinc
of Sciences on 26 December 1898. The naming of radium to make a luminous paint for watches,
dates to about 1899, from the French word radium,
compasses and other devices.
formed in Modern Latin from radius (ray): this was in
Radium is still used today as a radiation source
recognition of radium's power of emitting energy in the
form of rays. On September 1910, Marie Curie and André- in some industrial radiography devices to
Louis Debierne announced that they had isolated radium check for flawed metallic parts, similarly to X-
as a pure metal through the electrolysis of a pure radium ray imaging. When mixed with beryllium,
chloride (RaCl2) solution using a mercury cathode, radium acts as a neutron source.
producing a radium–mercury amalgam. This amalgam
was then heated in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas to
remove the mercury, leaving pure radium metal. Later
that same year, E. Eoler isolated radium by thermal
decomposition of its azide, Ra(N3)2. Radium metal was
first industrially produced in the beginning of the 20th
century by Biraco, a subsidiary company of Union
Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) in its Olen plant in
Belgium. The common historical unit for radioactivity,
the curie, is based on the radioactivity of 226Ra.