The element Radon was discovered in 1899. Friedrich Ernst Dorn discovered Radon in Halle, Germany when he was experimenting with Radium. In 1908, Robert Gray and William Ramsey isolated the gas. They named the element nitron. Since 1923 the element has been called Radon. It’s name is derived from the element Radium. Radon was first detected as an emission from Radium. Radon’s element symbol is Rn. Radon’s atomic mass is 86 and it’s in the noble gas family. It contains 86 protons, 136 neutrons and 86 electrons. Radon’s electron configuration is 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 4s2 3d10 4p6 5s2 4d10 5p6 6s2 5d10 4f14 6p6. Radon is a gas at room temperature and its density is .00973 g/cm3. Radon is the most densest gases at room temperature. Radon begins …show more content…
Radon is highly unreactive with oxygen, acids and bases. The element is soluble in water. Radon is not produced commercially. Radon is a natural occurring radioactive gas, and comes from the natural breakdown of Uranium. It is found in igneous rock and soil. Radon’s decay products are toxic and radioactive. It can be found in almost all homes and is the number one cause of lung-cancer in nonsmokers in the USA. Radon was used to treat cancer by radiotherapy, but now safer treatments are available. Also, radon is used in spas and an earthquake predictor and geothermal prospector. Radon’s crustal abundance is 4 x 10-13 mg/kg and its oceanic abundance is 6 x 10-16 mg/l. If Radon is inhaled it can cause more than lung cancer, such as silicosis, pulmonary fibrosis and can generate genotoxic effects. Radon-222 and Radon-220 are the only to abundantly found in the everyday life of humans. Radon-222 occurs most in the environment. Radon is the only gas that has radioactive isotopes and poses a threat to your health to the environment in it’s normal state. According to “Radon” Radon was the fifth radioactive element to be discovered. In 1530, miner’s begin getting a disease known as “mala metallorum” which was later found that Radon was the
In chapter 8 titled "Radium (Ra)" of The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum, the most interesting story developed within this chapter was the death of dial workers at Orange, New Jersey after been exposed to radium every day. It was interesting due to the fact that radium was used everywhere in the community and was never thought it could harm anyone. Radium was a super element that was used everywhere, but its continuous use unmasked its fatal habits. As it was stated in the text, "Radiant health, the ads proclaimed-beautiful skin, endless vigor, and eternal health—ingesting radium seemed the next best thing to drinking sunlight." (Blum 179). People were accepting radium as a natural gold element but they haven't realized constant contact
waste to be formed. This waste is very dangerous since it remains radioactive for hundreds of
Megalodon is still alive to this day because their has been giant sea animals bitten in half like a shark,whale,and there is footage of the Megalodon. The Megalodon went extinct 2.6 million years ago but I love the megalodon because it is the most ferocious predator. Meet the biggest predator in vertebrate history. The Megalodon shark is most known as the most gigantic shark to have ever lived on our planet and one of the largest vertebrate predators in history. Megalodons traveled the seas from 28 million years ago until 1.6 million years ago when they were wiped out during the Pleistocene Extinction. Megalodons were as we know gigantic and humongous. Some of the teeth found from this great predator have been maybe 17 centimeters in total height but most are between 3 to 5 inches. Reconstructions using jaws and other bones suggest that Megalodons most likely reached maximum lengths up to 54 feet around 3 times larger than Great Whites.
-Miners risked their lives when they were searching for uranium because they were exposed to radioactive waves which is a huge health concern
Uranium is a rare element and formed not just on Earth but also in space and other planets. It is formed in exploding supernovas, and since it has 92 electrons and 92 protons it is the heaviest naturally produced element. It is radioactive and very harmful and sometimes fatal to humans when contact is made. However it is a sustainable and long lasting source of energy and much better for the environment compared to the more traditional approach to energy, Fossil Fuels. Some scientists say it may be the solution to climate change.
could kill animals (source 2). If the radioactive material gets in water it could pollute the water. When
Radon gas was found in the 1870s, when some scientists were mining for ore in Ore Mountains in Schneeberg, Saxony. The area has a high content of radon in the tunnels because the area has been mined since the 1470s. The scientists later discovered that 75% of the miners died from lung cancer but it did not shut down the tunnels until 1950.
he found the number of alpha particles emitted per second by a gram of radium.
This uneasiness is a result of events over the past one hundred years showing the dangers of radiation. Although most accidents today leading to death from radiation poisoning occur from human error or faults in equipment, the incident involving the now named "radium girls" transpired from lack of public awareness and safety laws. (introduce topics of the paper) The Radium Luminous Material Corporation was founded in 1914 (renamed in 1921 to the United States Radium Corporation) by Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky and Dr. George S. Willis becoming the first U.S. company to produce radioluminescent paint. The paint used by this particular company was the trademarked "Undark", invented by William J. Hammered through mixing radium, zinc sulfide and glue with the help of Marie and Pierre Currie and Henri Becquerel.
At least it looked like magic. Radium was an element that glowed and that was part of its allure. Just ask the dial painters who later came to be known as "Ghost girls". However, glowing was not a problem for the "ghost girls", and they made the most of the sinister side effect. While mixing the paint, radioactive dust would fill the air and would end up on the girl's hair and clothes, and they loved it! They would put some on their cheeks to give them a pink "glow". They would wear their good dresses to the plant so they would be the ones shimmering and shining in the evening. They went as far as painting radium onto their teeth for a smile that would light up the dark. Therefore, it was no wonder that after a shift
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. This element is sorta boring but I found something interesting, they used it to make an an atomic bomb in the Cold War. 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. It was not the Curies but a British team working in Canada which was the first to understand that the presence of polonium and radium in pitchblende was not due to simple geological and mineral reasons, but that these elements were directly linked to uranium by a process of natural radioactive transmutation. The theory of radioactive transformation of elements was brilliantly enlarge in1901 by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the English chemist Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal. At dusk on the evening of November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, noticed a cathode tube that a sheet of paper come distance away. He put his hand between the tube and the paper, he saw the image of the bones in his hand on the paper.
In 2007, the world consumed 5.3 billion tons of coal, 31.1 billion tons of oil, 2.92 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, and 65,000 tons of uranium. All of these energy needs could have been met with only 6,600 tons of thorium, an abundant, slightly radioactive element found in the Earth’s crust.
The discovery of radioactivity can also be referred to the dawn of the nuclear age. Many scientist, were interested in satisfying their curiosity and began to explore nature and the function of atoms. Marie and Pierre Curie was apart of the exploration, being a husband and wife team. Marie and Pierre Curie began their experiment with a uranium-containing ore. The husband and wife team were the first ones who coined the word radioactivity. This term is used to describe the special characteristics of some elements that are radioisotopes. While comparing the activity of pure uranium to a uranium ore sample, they found that the ore was significantly more radioactive than the pure material. They fulfilled that the ore contained additional radioactive components besides the uranium. This observation led to the discovery of two new radioactive elements which they named polonium and radium.
Wilhelm Roentgen discovered radiation which is also known as x-ray in 1895. Radiation is energy turned into waves or particles in