Uranium tile Uranium tile Uranium tiles have been used in the ceramics industry for many centuries, as uranium oxide makes an excellent ceramic glaze, and is reasonably abundant on the earth's crust. Not long after Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in uranium salts, Madame Curie discovered both polonium and radium as two new radioactive elements also present with uranium. The relatively high specific activity and moderate half-life of 1,600 years of Ra-226, the main radioisotope of radium found in uranium ore, made for a material which when mixed with a phosphor allowed for a glow-in-the-dark substance. Thus, in addition to its medical usage,
Uranium–uranium dating Uranium–uranium dating Uranium–uranium dating is a radiometric dating technique which compares two isotopes of uranium (U) in a sample: uranium-234 (U) and uranium-238 (U). It is one of several radiometric dating techniques exploiting the uranium radioactive decay series, in which U undergoes 14 alpha and beta decay events on the way to the stable isotope Pb. Other dating techniques using this decay series include uranium–thorium dating and uranium–lead dating. U, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, decays to U through emission of an alpha particle to thorium-234 (Th), which is comparatively unstable with a half-life of just 24