Radium properties

The isolation and identification of 4 radioactive elements in minute amounts took place at the turn of the century, and in each case the insight provided by the periodic classification into the predicted chemical properties of these elements proved invaluable. Marie Curie identified polonium in 1898 and, later in the same year working with Pierre Curie, isolated radium. Actinium followed in 1899 (A. Debierne) and the heaviest noble gas, radon, in 1900 (F. E. Dorn). Details will be found in later chapters which also recount the discoveries made in the present century of protactinium (O. Hahn and Lise Meitner, 1917), hafnium (D. Coster and G. von Hevesey, 1923), rhenium (W. Noddack, Ida Tacke and O. Berg, 1925), technetium (C. Perrier and E. Segre, 1937), francium (Marguerite Percy, 1939) and promethium (J. A. Marinsky, L. E. Glendenin and C. D. Coryell, 1945). 

Langmuir D, Melchoir D (1985) The geochemistry of Ca, Sr, Ba, and Ra sulfates in some deep brines from the Palo Duro Basin, Texas. Geochim Cosmochim Acta 49 2423-2432 Langmuir D, Reise AC (1985) The thermodynamic properties of radium. Geochim Cosmochim Acta 49 1593-1601... 

Indeed, the Theosophical infusion of matter with life, and the ability of life force and will to effect the changes in matter demanded by spiritual alchemy and occult chemistry, seemed to find some support from the newly discovered phenomenon of radiation. Besant s On the Watch-Tower column, for instance, noted with excitement an article on the origin of life by Butler Burke published in the Daily Chronicle in 1905. There, Burke noted that radium may be that state of matter that separates, or perhaps unites, the organic and the inorganic worlds, and that radioactivity endows matter with some of the properties of organic matter (quoted in [Besant] 1905a, 481). 

Recent discoveries would appear to suggest that this mysterious Fire of Life, which, whatever else it may have been, was evidently a force and no true fire, since it did not burn, owed its origin to the emanations from radium, or some kindred substance. Although in the year 1885, Mr. Holly would have known nothing of the properties of these marvelous rays or emanations, doubtless Ayesha was familiar with them and their enormous possibilities, of which our chemists and scientific men have, at present, but explored the fringe. (1905, 167)... 

For instance, Besant commented on Sir William Ramsay s November 26, 1903 lecture to the London Institution on the properties of radium, where he argued that it seemed that the dreams of the alchemists were not such folly as the wiseacres had thought, even though their methods did amount, as someone has said, to little more than a sort of cookery. It might happen that in time the changing of tin... 

Marie (NLP 1903, NLC 1911 ) and Pierre (NLP 1903 ) Curie took up further study of Becquerel s discovery. In their studies, they made use of instrumental apparatus, designed by Pierre Curie and his brother, to measure the uranium emanations based on the fact that these emanations turn air into a conductor of electricity. In 1898, they tested an ore named pitchblende from which the element uranium was extracted and found that the electric current produced by the pitchblende in their measuring instrument was much stronger than that produced by pure uranium. They then undertook the herculean task of isolating demonstrable amounts of two new radioactive elements, polonium and radium, from the pitchblende. In their publications, they first introduced the term radio-activity to describe the phenomenon originally discovered by Becquerel. After P. Curie s early death, M. Curie did recognize that radioactive decay (radioactivity) is an atomic property. Further understanding of radioactivity awaited the contributions of E. Rutherford. 

Radium salts have the property of causing surrounding objects to become temporally radioactive. This "induced radioactivity," as it may be called, is found to be due to the... 

We must now more fully consider the radium emanation — a substance with more astounding properties than even the radium compounds themselves. By distilling off the emanation from some radium bromide, and measuring the quantities of heat given off by the emanation and the radium salt respectively, Professors Rutherford and Barnes proved that nearly three-fourths of the total amount of heat given out by a radium salt comes from the minute quantity of emanation that it contains. The amount of energy liberated as heat during fre decay of the emanation is enormous one cubic centimetre liberates about four... 

While studying radium, Friedrich Ernst Dorn (1848—1916) found that it gave off a radioactive gas that, when studied in more detail, proved to be the sixth noble gas. Dorn was given credit for its discovery in 1900. He called it radon, a variation of the word radium. Sir Wdham Ramsay and R. W. Whytlaw-Gray, who also investigated the properties of radon, called it niton from the Latin word nitens, which means shining. Several other scientists who worked with radon named it thoron because of the transmutation of radon-220 from the decay of thorium. However, since 1923, the gas has been known as radon because it is the radioactive decay gas of the element radium. The name is derived from the Latin word radius, which means ray. ... 

Marie Curie discovered radium in her laboratory in Paris in 1898. The unique properties of this naturally occurring radioactive element suggested to many that it had therapeutic uses. In the early 1900s, radium therapy was accepted by the American Medical Association. Radium was thought to cure a range of illnesses including... 

Thorium is commonly found in combination with other actinide elements, with organic and inorganic chemicals, and with acids and bases during occupational exposure. The health effects of occupational exposures to thorium on humans, therefore, cannot necessarily be attributed to thorium. The daughter products of thorium have unique properties that also add to the radiological toxicity of thorium. For further information, see the toxicological profiles on uranium, radon, and radium. 

At the time of the discovery of radio-activity, about seventy-five substances were called elements in other words, about seventy-five different substances were known to chemists, none of which had been separated into unlike parts, none of which had been made by the coalescence of unlike substances. Compounds of only two of these substances, uranium and thorium, are radio-active. Radio-activity is a very remarkable phenomenon. So far as we know at present, radio-activity is not a property of the substances which form almost the whole of the rocks, the waters, and the atmosphere of the earth it is not a property of the materials which constitute living organisms. It is a property of some thirty substances—of course, the number may be increased—a few of which are found widely distributed in rocks and waters, but none of which is found anywhere except in extraordinarily minute quantity. Radium is the most abundant of these substances but only a very few grains of radium chloride can be obtained from a couple of tons of pitchblende. 

Together, this famous couple, Pierre Curie, 1859-1906, and Mme. Marie Sklodowska Curie, 1867-1934, discovered radium and polonium, and founded the beneficent science of radioactivity. Pierre served as professor of physics at the Sorbonne, and collaborated with his brother, Jacques Curie, in the discovery and investigation of piezo-electricity. He introduced the concept of symmetry in physical phenomena and studied magnetic properties as a function of temperature. Marie served as professor of radioactivity at the University of Paris. 

These two kinds of lead are now known to be isotopes, or inseparable elements which belong in the same space in the periodic table and yet differ in atomic weight and in radioactive properties. According to Frederick Soddy, the first clear recognition of isotopes as chemically inseparable substances was that of H. N. McCoy and W. H. Ross in 1907 (75,107). Strictly speaking, the science of radioactivity has revealed only five naturally occurring new elements with distinctive physical and chemical properties polonium, thoron, radium, actinium, and uranium X2. All the other natural radioactive elements share previously occupied places in the periodic table. 

Less than a year after her husband s death, Mme. Curie accepted a professorship at the University of Paris. With the able assistance of Professor Andre Debierne, who took charge of the laboratory and taught for many years an ever-increasing number of students from all parts of the world, she directed the instruction and research in radioactivity (86). When the university acquired new land, it laid out a street called the Rue Pierre Curie and built a laboratory for her. The Curie Institute and the Pasteur Institute work in close harmony, and Mme. Curie spent much of her time on researches dealing with the therapeutic properties of radium and radon (69). During World War I she had complete charge of the radiological service in French military hospitals. 

Dorn as a product of the radioactive decay of radium. Ramsay made enough of it to measure its properties in 1908. 

Uranium-238 emits an alpha particle to become an isotope of thorium. This unstable element emits a beta particle to become the element now known as Protactinium (Pa), which then emits another beta particle to become an isotope of uranium. This chain proceeds through another isotope of thorium, through radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, thallium and lead. The final product is lead-206. The series that starts with thorium-232 ends with lead-208. Soddy was able to isolate the different lead isotopes in high enough purity to demonstrate using chemical techniques that the atomic weights of two samples of lead with identical chemical and spectroscopic properties had different atomic weights. The final picture of these elements reveals that there are several isotopes for each of them. 

---