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The Discovery Of Radioactive Elements In The 1900's

1946 Words8 Pages

The Discovery of Radioactive Elements Radiation is now known as very dangerous and unhealthy, imagine a time when mentioning radiation everyone thought of the healing properties and considered it a cure all. To understand why it was considered a cure all, in the 1900’s we must go to the very beginning when Uranium was discovered. The beginning of Radioactivity Uranium was discovered in an old silver mine called Joachimsthal located in the city of Jáchymov in the Czech Republic.The mine had been running since 1517 to the 1900’s and produced 554,44 tons of silver for their coins. To the silver miners Uranium was considered worthless and was given the name pesh blende or hard luck because when they found it there was no silver nearby. …show more content…

Marie Curie coined the term radioactivity from Henri Becquerel. Her experiments included isolating the uranium and found that it was not as radioactive when it was uranium, and there had to be other radioactive elements in the pitchblende. (a mix of ores) The discovery of more new elements, even got Marie’s husband excited and her husband Pierre put his own research aside to help Marie. By 1898 they had discovered two elements which were Polonium and Radium. She came up with the name Polonium from her home country of Poland. For radium since it was the most radioactive it got rad from the radiation. Pierre found that when he put the glass vial of radium on his skin it would turn his skin red. This would tell us that it is toxic or harmful to us now, but during the time heat was used for a lot of treatments. So it began to be used as a cure all. Radium would cure visible tumors and due to the suspected heat treatment of the element it was put into everyday use, but this was dangerous because it was in more things than just band aides or medical treatments.. It was put in everything, soon there was radium water, toothpaste, and even spas to fully bathe in radium. The reason that a lot of companies started to sell radium products was because of the price. In order to put it into perspective the price of gold at the time was only sixty-six …show more content…

It was more for the rich as it was advertised as bathe in radium. There was also very expensive makeup created called tho-radia marketed towards the rich for that glow. One of the ads that was run for radium water was a health advice ad named Here’s Health, it read “To keep that health you must keep Nature’s laws. They are simple and easy to keep; but if they are broken Nature exacts a heavy penalty from each and every one. Get plenty of sleep, exercise, and wholesome fun. Avoid overwork, all other excesses, eat fresh natural foods, breathe fresh air, and drink plenty of fresh , invigorating, natural radioactive water from the

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