Sunday, June 2, 2013
Kyle's Curie Tour
The Curie tour gave me a good idea for the types of conditions that Curie experienced during her life. The most interesting thing to me is just how expensive it was to create just a gram of radium. That just 1 gram cost $100,000 is insane, but the fact that it required 4 grams to use the radium bomb for testing just makes it even more insane. This price for the radium doesn't even include the cost of designing the machine and the parts that are used to make it. The fact that a women during this time was able to accomplish so much is astounding, but what made it even more fascinating is that her father in law was willing to watch the kids so that she could continue her research.
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I'd be curious to see how much it costs today to get the same amount of radium. Has the refinement process improved significantly?
ReplyDeleteI too found the tour very enlightening about conditions of Curie as well as costs. I agree with Attention in thinking that maybe a refined technique of extraction could change costs.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was interesting that her father in law was willing to help. I doubt that there were many men back then that would be willing to help a woman continue her research. Perhaps it was because of him and his fathering that Pierre Curie was so willing to research with his wife?
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