Radium

Characteristics

Radium is densest of alkaline-earth metals, it is intensely radioactive and resembles the Baryum chemically. One finds it in very small quantity, in combined form, in the Pechblende, a uranium ore, like in other uranium minerals. The preparations of radium have the property to remain at a temperature higher than that of the ambient conditions. Their radioactive radiation is of three types: alpha, beta and gamma. Radium can also produce neutrons when it is mixed with Béryllium.

When it is coldly prepared, pure radium is of a brilliant white color, but it blackens when it is exposed to the air (probably by formation of Nitrite). Radium is luminescent (it emits a low blue color), it breaks up in water by formation of radium hydroxide, and it is a little more volatile than barium.

Applications

The rare applications of radium come very from its radioactive properties . It was used in the needles of the watches until the years 1950, for its properties of luminescence. It was also used in lightning conductors in order to increase the effect of point of those. This effect is not shown and this system is not marketed any more. Certain countries (Belgium and Luxembourg in particular) impose a disassembling of these lightning conductors. Other uses consisted in using sources of radium in curiethérapie.

History

The radium (whose name starting from Latin radius - ray is forged at the same time as Radioactivité) was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898 per extraction of the Pechblende, an ore of Uranium.

See too

Simple: Radium

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