Radium

Radioactivity

Radium is over one million times more radioactive than the same mass of uranium. Its decay occurs in at least seven stages; the successive main products have been studied and were called radium emanation or exradio (this is radon), radium A (polonium), radium B (lead), radium C (bismuth), etc. (The radon is a heavy gas, the later products are solids.) These products are themselves radioactive elements, each with an atomic weight a little lower than its predecessor.

Related Topics:
Uranium - Radon - Polonium - Lead - Bismuth

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Radium loses about 1% of its activity in 25 years, being transformed into elements of lower atomic weight with lead being a final product of disintegration.

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The SI unit of radioactivity is the becquerel (Bq), equal to one disintegration per second. The curie is a non-SI unit defined as that amount of radioactivity which has the same disintegration rate as 1 gram of Ra-226 (3.7 x 1010 disintegrations per second, or 37 GBq).

Related Topics:
Becquerel - Curie

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