 Discovery Information
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| Who: G.T.Seaborg, R.A.James, A. Ghiorso |
| When: 1944 |
| Where: United States |
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| Name Origin
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| In honour of Pierre and Marie Curie.
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| "Curium" in different languages. |
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| Sources
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| Made by bombarding plutonium with helium ions. Curium was made in elemental form for the first time in 1951.
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| Uses
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| As curium is only available in extremely limited quantities, it has few uses, however, it was used on a Mars mission as an
alpha particle source for the Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer.
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| History
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| Curium was first synthesized at the University of California, Berkeley by Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso in 1944. The team named the new element after Marie Curie and her husband Pierre who are famous for discovering radium and for their work in radioactivity. It was chemically identified at the Metallurgical
Laboratory (now Argonne National Laboratory) at the University of Chicago. It was actually the third transuranium element
to be discovered even though it is the second in the series. Curium-242 (half-life 163 days) and one free neutron were made by bombarding alpha particles onto a plutonium-239 target in the 60-inch cyclotron at Berkeley. Louis Werner and Isadore Perlman created a visible sample of curium-242
hydroxide at the University of California in 1947 by bombarding americium-241 with neutrons. Curium was made in its elemental form in 1951 for the first time.
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| Notes
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| The isotope curium-248 has been synthesized only in milligram quantities, but curium-242 and curium-244 are made in multigram amounts,
which allows for the determination of some of the element's properties.
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| Curium-242 can generate up to 120 watts of thermal energy per gram (W/g); its very short half-life though makes it undesirable as a power source for long-term use.
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| 19 radioisotopes of curium have been characterized, with the most stable being Cm-247 with a half-life of 1.56 x 107 years, Cm-248 with a half-life of 3.40 x 105 years, Cm-250 with a half-life of 9000 years, and Cm-245 with a half-life of 8500 years. All of the remaining radioactive
isotopes have half-lifes that are less than 30 years, and the majority of these have half lifes that are less than 33 days.
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| So radioactive it glows in the dark. |
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| Hazards
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| Curium bio-accumulates in bone tissue where its radiation destroys bone marrow and thus stops red blood cell creation. |
