What is thorium 229 used for?
Thorium-229 is one of the most stable radioactive isotopes of thorium. It is currently used in cancer research.
What are thorium levels?
Thorium (chemical symbol Th) is a naturally occurring radioactive metal found at trace levels in soil, rocks, water, plants and animals. Thorium is solid under normal conditions. There are natural and man-made forms of thorium, all of which are radioactive.
What is the mass number of thorium?
232.03806 u
Thorium/Atomic mass
How many neutrons does thorium 229 have?
| Name | Thorium |
|---|---|
| Number of Protons | 90 |
| Number of Neutrons | 142 |
| Number of Electrons | 90 |
| Melting Point | 1750.0° C |
Where is thorium used?
Thorium oxide is used as an industrial catalyst. Thorium can be used as a source of nuclear power. It is about three times as abundant as uranium and about as abundant as lead, and there is probably more energy available from thorium than from both uranium and fossil fuels.
What happens when you eat thorium?
After you eat or drink thorium, almost all of it leaves your body in the feces. The small amount of thorium left in your body may enter your bones from the blood and stay there for many years. The main way thorium will enter your body is by breathing dust contaminated with thorium.
Where is thorium mostly found?
Thorium is mainly mined in Australia, Canada, the United States, Russia and India, according to Minerals Education Coalition. Trace levels of thorium are found in rocks, soil, water, plants and animals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Does thorium have a group number?
Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder….
| Thorium | |
|---|---|
| Atomic number (Z) | 90 |
| Group | group n/a |
| Period | period 7 |
| Block | f-block |
How is thorium-229 studied in a vacuum?
Thorium-229 is studied as trapped atomic ions in vacuum or doped into transparent crystals such as CaF 2. Because the nuclear transition energy is in the range of transitions of valence electrons, the electronic state may influence the nuclear excitation and decay rates.
What is the half life of thorium 229th?
229Th is a radioactive isotope of thorium that decays by alpha emission with a half-life of 7917 years.
How is the 229 th isomer used in the nuclear clock?
The low energy makes the 229 Th isomer accessible to resonant laser excitation. Observed in laser-cooled trapped thorium ions or with thorium dopant ions in a transparent solid, the nuclear resonance may serve as the reference for an optical clock of very high accuracy.
What are the mass numbers of thorium isotopes?
It has been proposed to perform laser spectroscopy of the 229 Th nucleus and use the low-energy transition for the development of a nuclear clock of extremely high accuracy. The known isotopes of thorium range in mass number from 208 to 238. ^ mTh – Excited nuclear isomer.