April 20, Glow Day (Marie and Pierre Curie)

April 20, 2013

Radium watch hands; Nobel Foundatin image
Caption from the Nobel.org site: “Radium hands from 1940-1950’s watches. (Photo licensed under Creative Commons, author: Mauswiesel, November 2011)”  The glowing watches to which these hands were attached sometimes caused problems; people who painted the radium on to the hands and the dial suffered a high degree of radiation-related diseases.  Modern watches that glow typically do not use radium.

On April 20, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie succeeded in isolating a chunk of the element radium, one of the earliest radioactive elements studied.

For this work they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, with Henri Becquerel.

Pierre died in 1906, run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Marie won a second Nobel, in Chemistry, in 1911. Marie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, a disease probably caused by her having received so much radiation over the course of her career.

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2 Comments | History, Physics, Radiation, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Radiation dose comparison charts from XKCD

March 20, 2011

No, there’s no humor in this thing — just good, solid information.

XKCD put together a chart that shows in geometric terms how various radiation doses work. With a tip of the pen to Bob Parks, the chart notes that cell phones don’t count here because cell phones don’t put out ionizing radiation, the type that causes cancer, but just radio waves.

The chart won’t be easy to read here — click on the image and go to the XKCD site for a bigger, more readable image:

Radiation Dose Chart from XKCD

Radiation Dose Chart from XKCD

It’s a good, clear graphic in its full size.  Go see.

5 Comments | Japan, Presentations, Public health, Radiation | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell