Interesting tidbits about URANIUM-3 Marie Curie piled her pitchblende. When dissolved in solution, boiled, and then cooled, the pitchblende formed crystals in much the same way that cooling saltwater leaves flakes of salt on the edge of a glass. “Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself,” she recalled later. Marie examined the crystals with an electrometer, setting aside the specks with the most powerful radioactive signatures. She was eventually able to isolate a tenth of a gram of radium chloride and prove it was a new element that deserved its own spot in the periodic table. Marie and Pierre were jointly awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics, shared with Becquerel, for their discovery of radiation phenomena. The French newspapers fell in love with the Curies and their cadaver shed. Pierre made a show of exposing his arm to radium to create a burn, which healed after two months, to demonstrate what he called radium’s abilities to cure cancer. Doctors confirmed that he was right. Concentrated doses of radium could indeed shrink and even eliminate tumors. The radiation seemed to kill younger cells—in particular, the cancerous ones— while leaving healthily matured cells untouched.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 09:35:51 +0000
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