88 Ra Radium
Alkaline earth metal, mass: 226 u, no stable isotopes, abundance rank (earth/space): 84/?Click image to magnify. This is no radium, but it could look like that. In a totally inert environment, the otherwise very reactive radium is a silvery, faintly blue luminescent metal. Radium is a soft, ignoble metal, which chemically is very similar to barium. It is radioactive, the most stable isotope, 226Ra, has a half-life of 1602 years and decays to radon. Radium was discovered by Marie Curie and played an important role in the earliest research of radioactivity. Up to the late 1920s, it was treated quite unscrupulously and was even promoted as being healthy. A popular application was for self-luminous paint in clock dials. Only after many people died very gruesome and slowly, it was realized that radioactivity isn't harmless at all, but very cancer-producing. Today radium is hardly used for anything, except in very small amounts for research. Natural radium is produced in the decay chain of uranium via thorium.

Self-luminous white paint which contains radium on the face and hand of an old clock.
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Page last changed on March 05. 2010
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