Radium , including Technical Data, Safety Data and its high purity properties, research, applications and other useful facts are discussed below. Scientific facts such as the atomic structure,ionization energy, abundance on Earth, conductivity and thermal properties are included.

Radium is a silvery metal that has a brilliant white color which quickly turns black when exposed to air. Formerly, radium was used in self-luminous or glow-in-the-dark paints for watches, clocks, instrument dials, nuclear panels and aircraft switches. After radium was deemed unsafe for human contact, it was no longer used in this capacity. Today, all radium is produced by the decay of other heavier elements and is found in minute amounts in theuranium ore uraninite and in thorium minerals. Radium is commercially obtained aschloride and bromide.

Radium is an S-Block, Group 2, Period 7 element. The number of electrons in each of Radium‘s shells is 2, 8, 18, 32, 18, 8, 2 and its electronic configuration is 1s2 2s2p6 3s2p6d10 4s2p6d10f145s2p6d10 6s2p6 7s2. In its elemental form Radium‘s CAS number is7440-14-4. The radium atom has a radius of 215.pm and it‘s Van der Waals radius is 283.pm. 

Radium was discovered by Marie Sk?odowska-Curie and her husband Pierre on December 21, 1898 in pitchblende from North Bohemia. In 1910, through the electrolysis of a pure radium chloride solution by using a mercury cathode and distilling in an atmosphere of hydrogen gasradium, radium was isolated as a pure metal by Curie and André-Louis Debierne. In the beginning of the 20th Century, radium was first industrially produced by Biraco, a subsidiary company of Union Minière du Haut Katanga in Belgium.