Uranium Atomic number 92 Unstable Commentary

Berlin, Paris—Martin Heinrich Klaproth, Eugène-Melchoir Péligot elements

Uranium

• Martin Heinrich Klaproth precipitated a yellow compound
• from pitchblende, likely sodium diuranate,
• and assumed it was the oxide of a new element
• He heated his yellow oxide and got a black powder,
• actually an oxide of uranium,
• and assumed it was the new element.
• *
• Eugène-Melchoir Péligot took the black oxide
• and heated it with potassium
• to isolate uranium metal for the first time.

Atomic number 92

• Klaproth named the element
• after the planet Uranus,
• which William Herschel had discovered
• eight years before.
• A mixture of three isotopes of uranium
• is found in nature—uranium-234,
• uranium-235, and uranium-238—
• and all are radioactive.
• Sufficiently concentrated, uranium-235
• can sustain a nuclear chain reaction,
• releasing tremendous energy,
• which has been used for generating power
• and making nuclear bombs.
• Uranium-235 spontaneously decays
• with a half-life of 703.8 million years
• through a series of lighter and lighter
• elements—protactinium, thorium, actinium,
• francium, radium, radon, and polonium—
• eventually resulting in lead.

Unstable

• The half-life
• of a human
• is considerably
• shorter than
• uranium’s.
• Time like
• sand in
• an hour-
• glass soon
• runs out.