[SteveB]

Hello.

Before I start, I have no intention of doing this any time soon since I don't have proper protection, shielding, and other tools. I'm just curious as I have a "thing" for radium. I'm just pondering various things about it... if one day I did have a safe way of working with it.

I've been thinking recently about the electrolysis of radium chloride.

How much radium would be obtainable from a few hands or dials? Is there any other method of obtaining the radium besides using mercury in the electrolysis process?

Would there even be a visible quantity?

Thanks,

Steve

[woelen]

The amount of radium in the hands or dials is increadibly low. The glow of these is due to some radiation sensitive material (IIRC ZnS), which emits green light when excited by the radium radiation.
I doubt you will have more than 1 ug of radium in an average watch.

[SteveB]

Hi, woelen.

Yeah, I thought it would be a low amount. Sounds quite impractical now that I think about it.. need ~1000 dials / hands for 1 mg.

One day...

[woelen]

And besides that, even if you could isolate a macroscopic quantity of radium, then you still did not want that. I would not want to have multi-gramme quantities of radium metal in my home. That would kill me and my family, due to radiation.