What is raduim?chemical designation and adjectives signature (medical application)..Importance and use?
Answer:
RADIUM - (Ra), radioactive chemical element, heaviest of the alkaline-earth metals of major Group IIa of the periodic table. Radium is a silvery white metal that does not transpire free in outlook.
Radium was discovered (1898) by Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and an assistant, G. Bémont, after Mme Curie have observed that the radioactivity of pitchblende was four or five times greater than that of the uranium it contained and not fully explained on the argument of radioactive polonium, which she had simply discovered in pitchblende residues. The topical, powerfully radioactive substance followed the behaviour of barium, but because its chloride be slightly more insoluble it could be concentrated by fractional crystallization. By 1902, one-tenth gram of pure radium chloride was prepared by refining several tons of pitchblende residues, and by 1910 Mme Curie and André-Louis Debierne have isolated the metal itself.
Since all the isotopes of radium are radioactive and short-lived on the geological time level, any primeval radium would have disappeared long ago. Therefore, radium occur naturally lone as a disintegration product in the three untaught radioactive-decay series (thorium, uranium, and actinium series). The most stable isotope (1,620-year half-life) is a member of the uranium-decay series. Its parent is thorium-230 and its daughter radon-222. The further deterioration products, formerly called radium A, B, C, Cc, C^2, D, etc., are isotopes of polonium, head, bismuth, and thallium.
Radium's uses all result from its radiations. The most significant use of radium was formerly contained by medicine, principally for the treatment of cancer by subjecting tumours to the gamma radiation of its daughter isotopes. In abundant therapeutic applications radium have been superseded by the smaller number costly and more powerful artificial radioisotopes cobalt-60 and cesium-137. An intimate mixture of radium and beryllium is a moderately intense source of neutrons, used for scientific research and for resourcefully logging in geophysical prospecting for petroleum. For these uses, however, substitutes enjoy become available.
When concentrated, radium glows surrounded by the dark. Because of this property, it be once mixed with a bond of zinc sulfide to make a self-luminescent paint for see, clock, and instrument dials. During the 1930s it was found, however, that exposure to radium posed a serious peril to health: a little the workers who routinely used the radium-containing luminescent paint developed anemia and, in some cases, bone cancer. The practice of employ radium in luminescent coatings be halted after the high-ranking toxicity of the material be recognized.
In the thorium-decay series of radioactive elements, two radium isotopes come to pass. They are found naturally within the mineral monazite: radium-228 (6.7-year half-life) and radium-224 (3.64-day half-life). One of their descendants, thallium-208, emits gamma radiation even more incisive than that of bismuth-214; and, as a result of the complex sequence of half-lives, the gamma activity of freshly purified radium-228 increases for something like four years and then steadily decrease. A fourth isotope, radium-223 (11.7-day half-life), occurs within the actinium-decay series.
Metallic radium has big chemical reactivity. It is attacked by water beside vigorous evolution of hydrogen and by nouns with the formation of the nitride. It occur exclusively as the Ra2+ ion in adjectives its compounds. The sulfate, RaSO4, is the most insoluble sulfate known, and the hydroxide, Ra(OH)2, is the most soluble of the alkaline-earth hydroxides. Its compounds are amazingly similar to the corresponding barium compounds, making separation of the two elements difficult.-
Radium is an element.
It be discovered by the Curies
It was used during WWI as a radiation source for X-rays.
Radium (usually within the form of radium chloride) is used in tablets to produce radon gas which in turn is used as a cancer treatment. The isotope 223Ra is currently beneath investigation for use in drug as cancer treatment of bone metastasis.
Ra is the symbol