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Uranium's symbol on the Periodic Table What does it look, feel, taste, or smell like?[ edit ] Uranium ore Uranium was used in the "Little Boy": the first nuclear bomb used in warfare Uranium is silvery-white and metallic. Uranium can appear to be slightly blue. How was it discovered?[ edit ] Uranium was discovered in 1798 by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist. Klaproth found uranium while he was analyzing samples of pitchblende, a variety of the mineral uranite, from the Joachimsal silver mines in the Kingdom of Bohemia (now located in the present-day Czech Republic). It was discovered to be radioactive by Henri Becquerel in 1896, and until the discovery that thorium was radioactive two years later, in 1898, it was thought to be the only radioactive element. Where did its name come from?[ edit ] Uranium is named after the planet Uranus, which had been discovered some years before, in 1781, by William Herschel. Did You Know?

Uranium is the highest-numbered element, with a number of 92, to be found naturally in significant quantities on Earth. One ton of natural uranium can create over 40 million kilowatt hours of electricity. This is the same amount of energy that would be created by burning 16,000 tons of coal or the contents of 80,000 barrels of oil. Native Americans living on the Colorado Plateau used the uranium-bearing mineral carnotite to make bright yellow war paint. Where is it found?[ edit ] Uranium is found worldwide in soil and rocks. Australia has the largest known reserves. What are its uses?[ edit ] A nuclear power plant. Uranium is commonly used in nuclear reactors to make electricity, as well as in nuclear weapons. Uranium is also used to test the age of very old rocks. Uranium was used to color paints and glazes, although such use is rare today. Uranium can also be used to color glass yellow; such uranium glass, or "vaseline glass," glows green under ultraviolet light (also known as a black light.) Because it is so heavy, uranium is used in armor-piercing artillery bullets.

Is it dangerous?[ edit ] Pure uranium can burst into flames. Compounds with uranium in them are toxic. Uranium is radioactive, and can lead to cancer. Marie Curie and the radioactivity, The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics In 1935 Marie's daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, was awarded the Chemistry Prize together with her husband Frédéric Joliot for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. When Maria Sklodowska was growing up, Poland was occupied by Russia and the Russian Tsar decided that women should not study at university. Maria's parents were teachers, and she had four siblings. Maria had the highest grades in school when she was 15 years old, but suffered from “nervous disorders” and felt so tired she could not do anything. Finally Maria and her sister Bronya succeeded through hard work to get an education abroad. Nearly 24 years old, Maria, or "Marie" in French, began her studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris. She studied physics and mathematics on a postgraduate scholarship.

The only thing missing was a laboratory to do her research, but that problem was solved when a laboratory manager called Pierre Curie offered her a place. A year later, in 1895, they married. Nobel Prize-awarded discoveries That same year, French physicist Henri Becquerel discovered that minerals containing uranium emitted a strong radiation. Marie became interested in this discovery, and found a way to make precise radiation measurements. The more uranium the minerals contained, the higher strength radiation. Marie also found this radiation in minerals containing the element thorium. Marie called this radiation radioactivity - "radio" means radiation. She noted that the uranium ore pitchblende emitted much more radioactivity than the uranium in the mineral could deliver and that there was no thorium in pitchblende. She then figured out that pitchblende must contain another highly radioactive element, yet unknown. The idea of ​​a new element was so exciting to her husband Pierre that he put his own research aside and helped Marie. In 1898, they discovered two new elements - polonium and radium. Polonium was named after Marie's homeland, Poland. Radium got its name from the Latin word for ray.

Radium hands from 1940-1950's watches. (Photo licensed under Creative Commons, author: Mauswiesel, November 2011) In 1906 Pierre Curie died when he was run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Marie Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, a form of bone marrow damage probably caused by all the radiation she endured. Benefit to mankind Radioactive elements have atoms which emit different types of radiation. The high energy of the radiation destroys living cells and causes a burn. Lower doses can damage internal organs, cause anemia and increase the risk of cancer. The Curies discovered that radiation could also cure cancer and skin ulcers, and developed methods for treating cancer with radiation therapy. Their discovery also led to a greater understanding of how atoms are built up. Today radium has very few uses since safer substances with radioactive properties are used, such as cobalt and cesium. Share this: To cite this page MLA style: "Marie Curie and the radioactivity, The 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web.

17 Jan 2017. < Discovery of Radioactivity About Watch and Favorite Watch Watching this resources will notify you when proposed changes or new versions are created so you can keep track of improvements that have been made. Favorite Favoriting this resource allows you to save it in the “My Resources” tab of your account. There, you can easily access this resource later when you’re ready to customize it or assign it to your students. Discovery of Radioactivity Becquerel accidentally found that a uranium-rich mineral emitted invisible, penetrating rays that could darken a photographic plate. Learning Objective Discuss the history of the discovery of radiation Key Points The emission of the rays Becquerel discovered is called nuclear radioactivity , and the rays themselves are called nuclear radiation. A nucleus that spontaneously destroys part of its mass to emit radiation is undergoing radioactive decay . Radiation does not vary with chemical state. Marie and Pierre Curie discovered two new radioactive elements , which Marie named polonium and radium. Terms Full Text Becquerel's Pitchblende In 1896, the French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel accidentally found that a uranium-rich mineral called pitchblende emitted invisible, penetrating rays that could darken a photographic plate enclosed in an opaque envelope.

While working on phosphorescent materials, he happened to place the pitchblende on black paper that he had used to cover a piece of ﬁlm. When he looked more carefully, he noticed that the ﬁlm had lots of patches on it, and that this did not happen when other elements were placed on the paper. He eventually concluded that some rays must be coming out of the uranium crystals to produce this eﬀect. This means that rays carry energy , but pitchblende emits them continuously without any energy input. This is an apparent violation of the law of conservation of energy. It was soon evident that Becquerel's rays originated in the nuclei of the atoms . The emission of these rays is called nuclear radioactivity, or simply radioactivity. The rays are called nuclear radiation. A nucleus that spontaneously destroys part of its mass to emit radiation is said to decay. A substance or object that emits nuclear radiation is said to be radioactive. Becquerel found radiation to be associated with certain elements, such as uranium. Uranium is radioactive whether it is in the form of an element or compound . In addition, radiation does not vary with temperature , pressure , or ionization state of the uranium atom.

Since all of these factors affect electrons in an atom, the radiation cannot come from electron transitions, as atomic spectra do. Marie and Pierre Curie In 1898, Marie Curie began her doctoral study of Becquerel's rays. She and her husband, Pierre, soon discovered two new radioactive elements, which she named polonium, after her native land of Poland, and radium, because it radiates. These two new elements filled holes in the periodic table and displayed much higher levels of radioactivity than uranium. Over four years, working under poor conditions and spending their own funds, the Curies processed more than a ton of uranium ore to isolate a mere gram of radium salt . Uranium Mining in Utah Uranium Mining in Utah Raye C. Ringholz Utah History Encyclopedia Uranium, a radioactive element, was first mined in the western United States in 1871 by Dr. Richard Pierce, who shipped 200 pounds of pitchblende to London from the Central City Mining District near Denver, Colorado. The ore was researched for fabrication of steel alloys, chemical experimentation and as pigments for dyes, inks and stained glass. In 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie and G.

Bemont isolated the "miracle element" radium from pitchblende. That same year, uranium, vanadium and radium were found to exist in carnotite, a mineral containing colorful red and yellow ores that had been used as body paint by early Navajo and Ute Indians on the Colorado Plateau. The discovery triggered a small prospecting boom in southeastern Utah, and radium mines in Grand and San Juan counties became a major source of ore for the Curies. Prior to World War I, radium mining dwindled but a new bonanza was identified in the tailings dumps of the mines. When it was determined that the discarded vanadium added to molten steel would greatly increase the tensile strength and elasticity of the metal, Utah's vanadium industry flourished. One of the dominant figures in the resultant boom was Howard Balsley of Moab, who sold carnotite ores to Vitro Chemical Corporation of Pittsburgh for medicaments and luminous paint. It wasn't until twenty-five years later, as a result of the atomic age and subsequent arms race of the Cold War, that uranium, previously considered a waste product of the vanadium mines, came into demand as a key element for nuclear weaponry.

In the beginning, almost 90 percent of the United States' uranium supply was imported from the Belgian Congo and Canada. But scanty amounts being filtered from abandoned radium and vanadium dumps on the Colorado Plateau gave promise of an untapped domestic source. The Manhattan Project of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, charged with development of an atom bomb to end the war, instituted a covert program to mine uranium from the vanadium dumps and sent geologists to scour the region in search of new lodes. With the end of World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission replaced the Manhattan Project and launched the first federally-sponsored mineral rush in history. The AEC constructed roads into the back country, promised $10,000 bonuses for new lodes of high-grade ore, guaranteed minimum prices and paid up to $50 per ton on 0.3 percent ore, constructed mills, helped with haulage expenses and posted geologic data on promising areas tracked by federal geologists using airborne scinillometers and other sophisticated radiation detection instruments. The Four Corners area, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet, suddenly teemed with prospectors in the greatest ore search since the gold fever days of the previous century.

Amateurs and experts, alike, followed AEC guidelines and used radiation detectors called Geiger counters to test promising sandstone formations for uranium deposits. Concentrating on exposed outcroppings along canyon rims, they searched primarily for the grayish Salt Wash member of the Morrison formation. When a likely claim was located, they used diamond drills to core test holes to determine if mineable ore was present. In 1952 Charles Augustus Steen, an unemployed oil geologist from Texas, effectively proved there was significant uranium ore on the Colorado Plateau. Settling his wife and four young sons in a tarpaper shack near Cisco, he took off alone to seek the precious mineral. Unable to afford a geiger counter, he took a broken down drill rig into the back-country, ignored standard uranium-seeking technology, and used oil exploration geology to locate the Mi Vida mine in the Shinarump conglomerate of an area the AEC had deemed barren of ore. What had been ridiculed as "Steen's Folly" resulted in the nation's first big uranium strike in the Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley southeast of Moab. Steen's find triggered more.

Vernon Pick claimed the Delta Mine northwest of Hanksville, later selling it to international financier Floyd Odlum for nine million dollars and an airplane. Pratt Seegmiller staked the lucrative Freedom and Prospector claims near Marysvale. Joe Cooper and Fletcher Bronson discovered uranium in their played-out Happy Jack copper mine near Monticello and netted over $25 million. Between 1946 and 1959, 309,380 claims were filed in four Utah counties. A center of activity, the once sleepy farming town of Moab became known as "The Uranium Capitol of the World." By 1955 there were approximately 800 mines producing high-trade ore on the Colorado Plateau. Utah alone had produced approximately nine million tons of ore valued at $25 million by the end of 1962. But then the industry almost came to a standstill. The AEC, now holding ample reserves, announced an eight-year limited program, and finally completely stopped buying uranium in 1970.

Private industry triggered a brief second boom when nuclear power plants came on line in the mid-70s, but foreign competition, federal regulations and nuclear fears virtually put an end to domestic uranium mining. During the uranium heyday, the federal government built several buying stations and a number of milling and reduction centers on the Colorado Plateau. Utah's AEC milling facilities were in Salt lake City, Monticello, LaSal, Blanding, and Mexican Hat. In 1957 Steen opened the Uranium Reduction Company, the nation's first large independent uranium mill, in Moab. Sold to Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corporation in 1962, the facility shut down in 1984. The federal mills were sold to private industry and finally disbanded. Uranium excitement was not limited to the redrock desert. In the 1950s and 1960s, Salt lake City became known as the "Wall Street of Uranium Stocks." Triggered by a promoter named Jay Walters, Jr., a mania for buying penny stocks to finance developing uranium mines swept the country.

The first offering was sold in 1953; by the end of 1954, eighty-one uranium firms were listed with the Utah Securities Commission. Housewives, schoolteachers, auto mechanics and insurance executives stood in line to buy certificates to finance large corporations such as Uranium Corporation of America, Standard Uranium, Federal, and Lisbon, and scores of false claims that didn't have a whiff of ore. Utah's fabled uranium boom was not without tragedy. From the Manhattan Project days, health scientists warned that radiation in the mines was a danger to miners. Medical literature dating as early as the sixteenth century documented cancer deaths claiming a high percentage of radium miners in the Erz Mountains of Germany and Czechoslovakia. But neither the AEC, state governments, nor the mining companies would take responsibility to regulate ventilation and safety practices. It was not until hundreds of uranium miners in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and new Mexico had succumbed to lung cancer that safe levels of radiation were finally imposed. And not until 1989, after years of furtive court battles, that the United States Congress passed legislation to financially compensate radiation victims.

Although uranium mining in Utah and other western states has ceased, experts indicate that there is still substantial ore deep underground. Should demand for nuclear power revive and the market become viable, the Colorado Plateau may once again teem with the mines and mills of the atomic years. Uranium miner near Moab, 1918 Uranium miners Uranium miners See: Raye C. Ringholz, Uranium Frenzy, Boom and Bust on the Colorado Plateau (1989), and Raymond W. Taylor and Samuel W. Taylor, Uranium Fever, or No talk Under $1 Million (1970). Raye C. Ringholz Update: Since this article was published in the Utah History Encyclopedia in 1994, uranium mining has resumed in San Juan County. The following information was submitted by a reader: First uranium from Daneros mine milled at White Mesa mill: On Jan. 24, 2011, White Canyon Uranium Limited announced that 39,289 tons (35,635 tonnes) of ore was milled at the White Mesa Mill over the period Nov. 1, 2010 to Dec.

10, 2010. The ore with an average grade of 0.28% U3O8 (0.24% U) yielded 204,450 pounds of U3O8 (78.6 t U) at a recovery rate of 94.06%. There are currently a handful of applications and permits submitted for uranium mining in Utah. Early Study of Radioactivity: Marie Curie Elements and Atoms: Chapter 18 Early Study of Radioactivity: Marie Curie Marie Curie née Marja Sklodowska (1867-1934; see photo at Musée Curie) was one of the founders of the study of radioactivity. Born in Warsaw, she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. She is best known today for the discovery and isolation of radium [ Curie, Curie, & Bémont 1898 ; Curie 1902]. This painstaking task, requiring years of patient work under laboratory conditions primitive even by late 19th-century standards [1] and finally yielding a material so radioactive that it glows [2] , contributed greatly to her heroic image.

She and her husband Pierre also discovered polonium [ Curie & Curie 1898 ], which they named after her native Poland, partitioned at that time among the German, Austrian, and Russian empires. She shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, the same year she completed her doctoral dissertation. She, her husband Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel, were awarded the prize for their pioneering work on radioactivity. She was awarded the 1911 Nobel prize in Chemistry for her work in the discovery and isolation of the element radium. The name Curie lives on in the periodic table and among scientific units: the discoverers of element 96 named it curium, and a standard unit of radioactivity is called the curie. The fact that Marie Curie remains the only person to have won two Nobel Prizes in different sciences is sufficient testimony to the significance of her work and her place in the history of science. The fact that she did this work at a time when women were nearly non-existent in academic or industrial laboratories has given Curie nearly mythic status.

Her achievements are so compelling that they captured the attention even of Hollywood ( Madame Curie , 1943, starring Greer Garson). She is the female scientist nearly everyone can name. Before discovering elements, though, Curie carried out the work reported in this selection, laying important foundations for further work on radioactivity. Neither Curie nor anyone else in 1898 had any idea of the nature of radioactivity or its cause. The work described here is a model observational survey of a new field. Explanations of radioactivity would only come after the systematic accumulation and organization of information about the phenomenon. Rays emitted by compounds of uranium and of thorium Note by Mme Sklodowska Curie [3] presented by M. Lippmann, Comptes Rendus 126, 1101-1103 (1898); translation by Carmen Giunta I have studied the conductance of air under the influence of the uranium rays discovered by M. Becquerel [4] , and I examined whether substances other than compounds of uranium were able to make the air a conductor of electricity.

[5] In this research I employed a parallel-plate condenser; one of the plates was covered with a uniform layer of uranium or of another finely pulverized sample. (Diameter of the plates 8 cm; separation 3 cm.) One establishes a potential difference of 100 volts between the plates. The absolute value of the current which traversed the condenser was measured by means of an electrometer and a piezoelectric quartz. [6] I examined a large number of metals, salts, oxides, and minerals. [7] , [8] The following Table gives, for each substance, the magnitude of the current i in units of 10-11 amperes. The substances which I studied but omitted from the Table are at least 100 times less active than uranium.

[9] Amperes Black oxide of uranium (U2O5) [10] 27 " Green oxide of uranium (U3O8) 18 " Uranates [11] of ammonium, potassium, or sodium (approximately) 12 " Uranyl nitrate, uranous sulfate, uranyl potassium sulfate (approximately) [13] 7 " Artificial chalcolite (uranyl copper phosphate) [14] 9 " Thorium oxide [15] in a layer 0,25 mm thick 22 " Thorium oxide in a layer 6 mm thick 53 " Potassium fluoxyniobate and cerium oxide [17] 0,3 " " of Joachimsthal and of Pzibran 67 " Fergusonite, monazite, xenotime, niobite, eschynite [23] from 3 to 7 " Cleveite [24] very active All the uranium compounds studied are active, and are, in general, more active to the extent that they contain more uranium. [25] The compounds of thorium are very active.

[26] Thorium oxide surpasses even metallic uranium in activity. It is remarkable that the two most active elements, uranium and thorium, are the ones which possess the greatest atomic weight. [27] Cerium, niobium, and tantalum appear to be slightly active. [28] White phosphorus is very active, but its action is probably of a different nature than that of uranium and thorium. In fact, phorphorus is not active in the form of red phosphorus or in the state of phosphates. [29] All the minerals which demonstrate activity contain active elements. Two minerals of uranium, pitchblende (a uranium oxide) and chalcolite (uranyl copper phosphate) are much more active than uranium itself. This fact is most remarkable, and suggests that these minerals may contain an element much more active than uranium. I prepared chalcolite from pure reagents according to the procedure of Debray; this artificial chalcolite is no more active than other uranium salts. [30] Absorption. [31] -- The effects produced by active substances increase with the thickness of the sample layer.

This augmentation is very weak for the compounds of uranium; it is considerable for thorium oxide, which thus seems partially transparent to the rays it emits. To study the transparence of various substances, one places a thin plate of them over the active layer. The absorption is always very strong. However, the rays pass through metals, glass, and paper of slight thickness. Here are the fractions of radiation transmitted through a sheet of aluminum of thickness 0,01 mm: for uranium, ammonium uranate, uranous oxide, artificial chalcolite 0,33 for pitchblende and natural chalcolite 0,4 for thorium oxide and thorium sulfate in a 0,5-mm layer 0,7 for thorium oxide in a 6-mm layer. One can see that compounds of the same metal emit rays absorbed to an equal extent. The rays emitted by thorium are more penetrating than those emitted by uranium; finally, thorium oxide in a thick layer emits rays much more penetrating than those which it emits from a thin layer.

[33] Photographic images.-- I have obtained good photographic images with uranium, uranous oxide, pitchblende, chalcolite, and thorium oxide. These bodies act at a small distance, whether through air, through glass, or through aluminum. Thorium sulfate gives weaker images, and potassium fluoxytantalate very weak images. Analogy to the secondary rays of Röntgen rays.-- The properties of the rays emitted by uranium and thorium are very similar to those of the secondary rays of Röntgen rays, studied recently by M. Sagnac. I have ascertained, moreover, that the uranium, pitchblende, and thorium oxide emit, under the action of Röntgen rays, secondary rays which, from the point of view of discharging electrified bodies, generally have a greater effect than secondary rays from lead. [34] Among the metals studied by M. Sagnac, uranium and thorium come to be placed beside and beyond lead.

To interpret the spontaneous radiation of uranium and thorium, one could imagine that all space is constantly traversed by rays analogous to Röntgen rays but much more penetrating and unable to be absorbed except by certain elements with high atomic weight such as uranium and thorium. [35] Notes [1] View a photo of the shed in which the Curies discovered radium (at John Park's ChemTeam site). [2] Paints containing radium were used on watches with luminous dials early in the 20th century. [3] This work was done at the Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry. [Curie's original note; Pierre Curie had been head of the laboratory at this Paris institution since 1882.--CJG] [4] See Becquerel 1896 , annotated in the previous chapter. [5] The ability to make air a conductor of electricity was quickly recognized as a property of radioactive substances and of X-rays too, for that matter. Today we recognize this conductance of air as due to ionization: a ray knocks an electron from a molecule in the air, leaving behind a positively charged atom or molecule and free electrons.

As these charged particles move, their electrical charge moves with them; thus we have an electric current (motion of electrical charges) conducted through air. [6] The size of the current is a measure of the extent of ionization of the air near the radioactive substance, and therefore a measure of the activity of the substance (strength of the radioactivity). View a photo of the Curies with their electrometer (at Mus�e Curie). [7] The uranium used for this study was given by M. Moissan. The salts and oxides were pure products from the laboratory of M. Étard at the School of Physics and Chemistry. M. Lacroix was willing to procure for me some mineral samples of known provenance from the collection of the Museum. Certain rare and pure oxides were given by M. Demarçay. I thank these gentlemen for their courtesy. [Curie's original note --CJG] [8] Becquerel had found radioactivity in some uranium-containing crystals. A natural question was whether other substances were also active. As she wrote in her dissertation [Curie 1903], "... I made experiments to discover whether substances other than compounds of uranium and thorium were radio-active.

I undertook this research with the idea that it was scarcely probable that radio-activity ... should belong to a certain kind of matter to the exclusion of all other." The list of scientists who supplied Curie with samples includes two others who discovered or isolated elements. Henri Moissan had isolated fluorine in 1886, for which he would be awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1906. Eugène Demarçay had discovered the rare earth metal europium in 1896. Demarçay would provide spectroscopic confirmation of the Curies' discovery of radium later in 1898 [Demarçay 1898]. [9] Curie gave a bit more information in her dissertation [Curie 1903] about the substances she tested for activity, most of which she omits from this paper because they proved to be inactive. They included all the metals and non-metallic elements easily obtainable; a large number of rocks and minerals (e.g., naturally occuring inorganic substances not necessarily chemically purified); and an inventory of rare elements such as gallium, germanium, niobium, rubidium, and several rare earth metals.

[10] Uranium forms a complicated series of compounds with oxygen including UO2, UO3, and several compounds with oxygen-to-uranium ratios between 2 and 3, including U3O8. As a result, substances with oxygen-to-uranium ratios anywhere between 2 and 3 are possible, but these are usually mixtures (solid solutions) of the various compounds. [11] A uranate is a compound containing the complex anion UO42-, so the compounds named here are (NH4)2UO4, K2UO4, and Na2UO4. [12] Uranic acid is H2UO4; hydrated uranic acid has several units of water a part of the crystal, H2UO4.H2O. [13] The complex cation UO22+ is named uranyl. So uranyl nitrate is UO2(NO3)2 and uranyl potassium sulfate K2UO2(SO4)2.

Most likely there substances were used in the form of their common hydrates, UO2(NO3)2.6H2O and K2UO2(SO4)2.2H2O. The latter is the material in which Becquerel first found radioactivity [ Becquerel 1896 ]. Uranous sulfate is U2(SO4)3. [14] Chalcolite, also known as torbernite, is a copper uranyl phosphate with 8 to 12 units of water in the crystal structure: Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2.8-12H2O. Curie makes the distinction between artificial chalcolite, which she prepared herself, and natural chalcolite, a mineral found in nature, because the two materials gave widely different results, as discussed below the table. [15] Thorium oxide is ThO2. [16] Thorium sulfate is Th(SO4)2. This compound can include various numbers of units of water in the crystal structure. [17] Cerium has two common oxides, CeO2 and Ce2O3.

[18] Pitchblende is an amorphous black ore of uranium, consisting chiefly of uranium oxides. It can contain appreciable quantities of thorium as well, and, as the Curies would learn, traces of polonium and radium. Pitchblende is not a compound, i.e., not a substance of fixed chemical composition. It is not altogether surprising, then, to see pitchblende from different mines exhibiting different activity. [19] Autunite is a hydrated calcium uranyl phosphate: Ca(UO2)2(PO4)2.10H2O. [20] Thorite is a mineral consisting primarily of thorium silicate, ThSiO4. [21] Orangite is a thorium oxide. [22] Samarskite is a complex mineral. It may be thought of as an yttrium niobium oxide, YNb2O6, in which several other elements can substitute for the yttrium or niobium. For the purposes of this study, it is important to note that uranium and thorium are among the elements that can substitute for yttrium; indeed, samarskite is considered an important ore of uranium.

[23] Fergusonite is another yttrium niobium oxide, Y2O3.Nb2O5, or yttrium tantalum oxide, Y2O3.Ta2O5. Monazite is a rare earth phosphate mineral which can have considerable substitution of thorium for the rare earth metal and of silicon for the phosphorus. Xenotime is yttrium phosphate, YPO4. Niobite, also known as columbite, is FeNb2O6, but manganese can substitute for iron and tantalum for niobium. Eschynite can be thought of as a calcium titanium oxide, CaTi2O6, but several elements including thorium can substitute for calcium and niobium can substitute for titanium. It is worth noting that uranium and thorium are chemically rather similar to the rare earth metals, so it would not be surprising to find some uranium or thorium in natural samples of these minerals, whether or not they are recognized variations of the minerals. [24] Cleveite is a mineral composed mainly of UO2, with significant substitution of rare earth metals such as yttrium for the uranium.

[25] This statement is more profound and much less obvious than it may appear. The uranium compounds and minerals in the table contain uranium in a variety of chemical conditions including metal, salt, and oxide. The valence of uranium ranges from 0 in uranium metal to 3 in uranous sulfate to 6 in the uranyl compounds. Many properties of these substances differ because of the different chemical states of the uranium. But the radioactivity of these substances does not seem to depend on the chemical state of the uranium, but only on the quantity of uranium. This observation combined with the next two can be summarized by saying that radioactivity is an atomic property [Curie 1903]. That is, radioactivity is a property of a particular element (or rather, of a particular nucleus or isotope to use later terminology); its strength depends only on the quantity of the active element and is independent of its chemical state. [26] Before Curie carried out this research, radioactivity had been found only in substances which contained uranium. Gerhard Schmidt independently discovered radioactivity in thorium and reported his work just weeks before Curie's paper was presented (March 24 vs. April 12).

[27] Thorium and uranium are no longer at the end of the periodic table, but uranium remains the heaviest naturally occuring element. Curie's observation at the time suggested, but did not prove, a relationship between radioactivity and heavy elements. That relationship is now well established: all the elements with atomic number greater than that of bismuth (31 elements at latest count: elements 84-112, 114, and 116) are radioactive. [28] Curie's dissertation [Curie 1903] does not include this conclusion, but rather states: "All the minerals which showed radio-activity contained uranium or thorium." The slight activity observed for these elements was most likely due to impurities of uranium or thorium or perhaps even smaller traces of the more strongly radioactive polonium or radium. [29] Curie expanded this point in her dissertation [Curie 1903]. White phosphorus is "active" in that it causes the air near it to conduct electricity. But its activity is different than that of thorium and uranium in two important respects.

First, the activity of white phosphorus is accompanied by a discernible chemical change (oxidation), but that of uranium and thorium exhibits no such concomitant change. Second, the activity of phosphorus is limited to a specific chemical form (elemental white phosphorus), while that of uranium and thorium occurs in any and all of it chemical forms. Thus Curie could distinguish between the activity of uranium and thorium (radioactivity) and the ionization of air caused by a different phenomenon by careful comparison, even without understanding the cause of radioactivity. [30] If these minerals have more radioactivity than could be accounted for by the amount of uranium they contain, there must be another radioactive substance present. The comparison between natural and artificial chalcolite is particularly strong evidence for this conclusion. The artificial chalcolite, prepared from pure materials, contains only copper, uranium, oxygen, phosphorus, and hydrogen; the natural may contain traces of other elements as well. Any difference in activity, then, must be due to these traces. Curie had good reason to suspect that this activity was due to an element as yet undiscovered, for she had tested most if not all of the known elements for activity.

And she already had a powerful tool with which to pursue the new element: after any chemical reaction which would separate some elements in a sample from others, she could test the resulting fractions for activity and know that the unknown element was in the more active fraction. The prospect of discovering a new radioactive substance was so promising that Pierre Curie set aside his own line of research to assist Marie in this work. Their work was rewarded by discovery of not one but two new elements, polonium and radium. [ Curie & Curie 1898 ; Curie, Curie, & Bémont 1898 ] [31] Curie turned her attention to an aspect of radioactivity which made them interesting in the first place: their ability to penetrate opaque materials at least to some extent. A more detailed examination of penetrating power of radioactivity from a single source led Ernest Rutherford to distinguish between two different kinds of rays, which he labeled α and β [ Rutherford 1899 ]. Like this paper, Rutherford's is a careful phenomenological study, systematically accumulating and organizing information about radioactivity before attempting any explanation of it.

[32] The heading mm is obviously mistaken: the numbers represent fraction of activity remaining after passage through aluminum of a given thickness. At first one might think that the thicker the layer, the more active it should be. After all, the thicker the layer, the more active atoms are present. But the rays, whatever they are, can penetrate materials only to a certain extent. Thus, a sample of greater thickness will appear to be more active only if its rays are strong enough to penetrate the extra thickness of the sample. [33] Scientific conclusions are stronger, their validity more certain, when they can be derived from more than one line of evidence, more than one kind of measurement. Thus the observations on the relative ease of absorption of the rays reinforce some of the conclusions already based on the amount of activity: rays from the same element are the same in penetrating power, regardless of the chemical state of the element; rays from different elements are different in penetrating power as well as in quantity; the two minerals which Curie had already suspected harbor a new radioactive element have rays whose penetrating power is different from those of uranium and thorium.

[34] Among the hot topics in physics at the close of the 19th century were X-rays (Röntgen rays) discovered in 1895 [ Röntgen 1895 ], radioactivity (sometimes called Becquerel rays or uranium rays) discovered in 1896, and electrons (known at the time as cathode rays and corpuscles) whose study continued after significant progress in 1897 [ Thomson 1897 ]. There were a lot of rays under investigation. Some of them seemed to share several properties, and investigations of one kind of ray sometimes led to discoveries of another. (See previous chapter .) So it was not surprising that Curie would make a comparison to X-ray phenomena. The secondary rays she mentions are not X-rays themselves, but are most likely electrons ejected by metals exposed to X-rays. Like radioactive rays, electrons could penetrate thin layers of metal foil and make air conduct electricity. (See chapter 16 .) In fact, these secondary rays have a different source than radioactivity, but they are the same particle (electron) as the ray Rutherford labeled β.

[35] This speculation is not the correct explanation of radioactivity, but it was not outlandish. Pioneers of radioactivity research were puzzled for a long time by the source of the energy required to emit rays, whatever their nature. This speculation posited a source of energy outside the atom. Furthermore, the notion of space being permeated by something undetectable or nearly so was not foreign to physics at this time, for the concept of an all-pervading material "aether" as a medium for electromagnetic waves still persisted. At any rate, Curie clearly distinguished her observations from her speculation; her speculation would rise or (in this case) fall to the extent that it agreed with subsequent observations. References It's Elemental - The Element Polonium It's Elemental Melting Point: 527 K (254°C or 489°F) Boiling Point: 1235 K (962°C or 1764°F) Density: 9.32 grams per cubic centimeter Phase at Room Temperature: Solid Element Classification: Metal Period Number: 6 Group Number: 16 Group Name: Chalcogen Radioactive What's in a name?

Named for the country of Poland. Say what? Polonium is pronounced as peh-LOW-nee-em. History and Uses: Polonium was discovered by Marie Sklodowska Curie, a Polish chemist, in 1898. She obtained polonium from pitchblende, a material that contains uranium , after noticing that unrefined pitchblende was more radioactive than the uranium that was separated from it. She reasoned that pitchblende must contain at least one other radioactive element. Curie needed to refine several tons of pitchblende in order to obtain tiny amounts of polonium and radium , another radioactive element discovered by Curie. One ton of uranium ore contains only about 100 micrograms (0.0001 grams) of polonium. Due to its scarcity, polonium is usually produced by bombarding bismuth -209 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. This forms bismuth-210, which has a half-life of 5 days. Bismuth-210 decays into polonium-210 through beta decay . Milligram amounts of polonium-210 have been produced by this method.

Polonium-210 is a very strong emitter of alpha particles . A single gram of polonium-210 creates 140 Watts of heat energy and is being considered as a lightweight heat source for thermoelectric power for spacecraft. Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138.39 days. Polonium's most stable isotope , polonium-209, has a half-life of 102 years. It decays into lead -205 through alpha decay . Polonium-209 is available from Oak Ridge National Laboratory at the cost of about $3200 per microcurie. Polonium can be used to eliminate static electricity in machinery that is caused by processes such as the rolling of paper, wire or sheet metal, although other materials which emit beta particles are more commonly used for this purpose. Polonium is also used in brushes for removing dust from photographic films, although the polonium must be carefully sealed to protect the user from contamination. Polonium is also combined with beryllium to form neutron sources.

Estimated Crustal Abundance: 2×10-10 milligrams per kilogram Estimated Oceanic Abundance: 1.5×10-14 milligrams per liter Number of Stable Isotopes: 0 ( View all isotope data ) Ionization Energy: 8.417 eV

Question: The mineral and ore pitchblende is rich in what radioactive element, after which it is now named?
Answer: Uranium