The Radium Girls

SciShow explores the harrowing tale of the so-called Radium Girls, factory workers who were the first who for years worked with one of the world’s most radioactive substances -- and suffered the consequences.

 

Rays in the universe: radon

The earth contains a great many natural radioactive elements (such as uranium, thorium and potassium). Uranium, for example, is present in all rocks, and in particular granite rocks. When it decomposes, it gives rise to a radioactive family, ultimately forming lead, which is stable. Radon is one of the radioactive decay products of uranium. Its distinguishing sign is that it is a gas.

 And as it is a gas, it escapes and accumulates in caves or galleries, which are enclosed spaces. During the first few years when French uranium deposits were mined, the miners breathed air in which the radon content could be as high as 20,000 Becquerels per cubic meter. Epidemiological studies on uranium miners have shown that radon is a carcinogenic agent that can cause lung cancer. More recently, studies on the general population have confirmed this risk for exposure to radon in the home.

 

The epic story of radium

Picking up the work of the French physicist Henri Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie give the name "radioactivity" to the property possessed by certain elements of spontaneously emitting radiation. In 1898, Marie isolates polonium and radium, both of then unknown and highly radioactive elements.

 Medicine grabs radium and makes it the tool in the fight against cancer. Praised for its benefits, radium becomes a source of rejuvenation for the public and a source of profit for manufacturers. It will take time and evidence to admit the danger of its radiation...

 

Using gamma radiation in a unique way

Measuring the level of liquid inside a metal vessel or pipe is a huge process challenge for the petrochemical industry. Tracerco's LevelFinderPlus uses a gamma radiation source and segmented detector to accurately determine the liquid level in a vessel and the amount of other material that may have built up within the container. Andrew Hurst explains how the company's physicists addressed the challenge.

 Tracerco has received an IOP Innovation Award 2013 from the Institute of Physics for developing the measurement system.

 

SL-1 Accident Briefing Report - 1961 Nuclear Reactor Meltdown

U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (Idaho Operations Office) briefing about the SL-1 Nuclear Reactor Meltdown.

 The SL-1, or Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, was a United States Army experimental nuclear power reactor which underwent a steam explosion and meltdown on January 3, 1961, killing its three operators.

 

Prof Jim Smith: Is the future nuclear?

Professor Jim Smith is an environmental physicist from Portsmouth University and he is an expert in the Chernobyl accident's causes and consequences.

He was one of many big names who gave talks at the IOP's Physics in Perspective event at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in 2013.

The World's First Human-Made Nuclear Reactor

Today on SciShow, Hank brings us a little science history, telling us the tale of the world's first human-made nuclear reactor, which was built by a team of scientists and students led by Enrico Fermi in a converted squash court under a football field in Chicago.

 

The Manhattan Project

Some of the greatest advances in science have come from humanity's more destructive impulses. This is not the fault of science - when we discover powerful truths about the universe it's up to us to decide how to use them because they can either be boons or banes to the world. There may be no better example of this than the work done by the Manhattan Project - the years long, multinational effort to develop an atomic bomb during World War II. The project created unfathomably destructive weapons and led to a 50 year Cold War with the USSR, but is also the source of a lot of information about the atom we didn't have before, which has led to advances in many beneficial fields, like energy production and medicine. Science, like history, is always complicated.

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Marie Curie: Great Minds

Hank tells us the story of his favorite genius lady scientist and radioactive superhero, Marie Curie.

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Argonne OutLoud Public Lecture Series: Nuclear Energy

On November 15, 2012, Argonne National Laboratory opened its doors to the public for a presentation/discussion titled "Getting to Know Nuclear: Past, Present and Future." The speaker was Argonne researcher Roger Blomquist. The event was the latest in the Argonne OutLoud Public Lecture Series.

 

3 Physics Experiments that Changed the World

Cavendish experiment (gravity), Young double-slit experiment (interference of light) and Rutherford gold foil experiment (atomic nucleus).

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Happy 58th Birthday CERN

CERN is 58 years old on Saturday 29 September 2012. This video showcases some original footage from the 1950s to say happy birthday CERN!

 

Weak Interaction: The Four Fundamental Forces of Physics #2

Hank continues our series on the four fundamental forces of physics by describing the weak interaction, which operates at an infinitesimally small scale to cause particle decay.

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Strong Interaction: The Four Fundamental Forces of Physics

Part one of a four part series on the fundamental forces (or interactions) of physics begins with the strong force or strong interaction - which on the small scale holds quarks together to form protons, neutrons and other hadron particles.

 

 Hank continues his primer on the strongest of the four fundamental interactions of physics, the strong interaction. Today he talks about the nuclear force and a force carrier called a pion.

 

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Argonne nuclear pioneers: Chicago Pile 1

On December 2, 1942, 49 scientists, led by Enrico Fermi, made history when Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1) went critical and produced the world's first self-sustaining, controlled nuclear chain reaction. Seventy years later, two of the last surviving CP-1 pioneers, Harold Agnew and Warren Nyer, recall that historic day.

 

Real plutonium

We're given special access to various plutonium compounds at the National Nuclear Laboratory, in Sellafield. A chance to meet the "Hannibal Lecter of the Periodic Table". In part this video shows how plutonium is extracted from nuclear fuel waste.

 

What Keeps Nuclear Weapons from Proliferating: The hardest step in making a nuclear bomb

Bill explains that the hardest step is making the proper type of uranium. Weapons and power plants require uranium that contains a greater amount of the isotope uranium-235 than found in natural uranium, which is mostly uranium-238. He outlines the key difficulty in separating the two isotope: They have nearly identical properties. He explains the two key methods for separation: Gas diffusion and centrifuges.

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What is CERN? - Sixty Symbols

Professor Ed Copeland gives his own explanation and brief history of CERN - a Mecca for physicists and home of the Large Hadron Collider.

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Where Does The Sun Get Its Energy?

The sun has been producing light for about five billion years but where does all its energy come from? The most common idea is that the sun is burning gas - like a giant fireball in the sky. If this were true, the sun would have gone out long ago. So how is the sun actually fuelling itself? It is converting its own mass into energy. By combining protons (the nucleus of hydrogen) into helium, it squeezes some mass into energy - 4.3 billion kg per second. It is Einstein's famous E=mc^2 which gives us the quantitative relationship between mass and energy, where c is the speed of light.

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Exploring the Nature of Matter

An overview of the research conducted at Jefferson Lab.