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Write An Essay On Uranium Research Paper

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What is Uranium? Uranium is element atomic number 92 of the periodic table with the atomic symbol of U. It has 2 electrons in its outer shell. It is grey, silvery metal, with a density greater than that of lead, and nearly as dense as gold at 19.1g/cm3 (see figure 1). Uranium is common throughout the earth’s crust at a concentration of approximately 3 ppm, nearly as common as tin. Uranium will react when it comes into contact with acids and it will slowly oxidize in air, unless powdered; in which case it will combust instantly. Uranium’s special property is its weak radioactivity throughout all of its isotopes , each of which release alpha radiation . The half-life of uranium depends on the isotope being examined, which ranges through 6 …show more content…

The common uranium compound; uranium oxide, has a yellow colour. Uranium oxide was used in ceramic pottery in as early as 79CE by the romans to create a yellow colour in their creations. The uranium contained in these glasses would also cause the glass to fluoresce bright green under ultraviolet light. Uranium was used to colour glass up until modern times, due to health concerns of the radiation that uranium releases. However it is still possible to find antique uranium glass with a yellow tint such as in figure 2.
Despite its use through early history, science did not discover uranium until the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth refined uranium while he was working in his experimental laboratory in Berlin in 1789. Klaproth first created a fine fellow powder which is thought to have been sodium diuranate by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid then neutralizing it with sodium hydroxide. He believed the powder was an oxide of an undiscovered element, and heated it with charcoal to obtain the black powder of uranium oxide. This was as far as he got in his experiment. Klaproth named the newly discovered “element” after the planet Uranus which was discovered 8 years earlier. The true refining of uranium did not happen until 1841, when Eugène-Melchior Péligot created a pure sample of uranium metal by heating uranium tetrachloride with potassium

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