strontium is unique in the periodic
table because it's the only element that
is named after somewhere in the United
Kingdom there are lots of elements that
have been discovered in the UK more than
10 it's not an obvious name like gallium
of the France or germanium after Germany
this one is named after a small village
in Scotland called strontium I've never
been there I hope we might make a field
trip there sometime so here I am in
strontium now you can see I'm on my own
I'm not with the professor or anyone
else but I have managed to find the
address of a local history expert so I'm
going to go and pay him a visit you know
I've come to the right place
because look over there as a rainbow in
this village the first strontium salts
were discovered at least the first ones
where the element was identified so I
have a sample of strontium metal so it's
kind of granules as they're very big
granules its large granules of strontium
metal it's kind of in the middle of the
group 2 metals it's relatively soft and
so what we're going to try and do is
file some strontium metal off of the
granules I've never seen the element
I've never seen any strontium and
because of my particular age I when I
grew up in the 1950s and 1960s when
atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons
took part place widely across the world
strontium has always had a certain
sinister feeling to it because when
nuclear explosions take place when the
uranium atom splits some of the
fragments are strontium and they're not
only strontium but they're a radioactive
form of strontium known as strontium 90
there it goes
the fourth atomic bomb has been
successfully detonated this radioactive
material because strontium is in the
same group as calcium when it is
floating around in the air could be
absorbed by people and that incorporated
into their bones or their teeth in place
of calcium which you normally find in
bone and tooth enamel people like me a
radioactive doesn't explain my hair but
on the other hand it was quite a serious
problem so we need to take some
strontium ions and in this case I've got
a small amount of strontium nitrate okay
now I'm going to take a small amount and
put it into a test tube so that I can
mix it with some of our combustion
mixture
Wow
what a fantastic reaction really really
energetic lots of energy given out lots
of hot steam lots of hot co2 and
importantly a lovely lovely red color
from the strontium emission fantastic
technically operationally and militarily
Redwing may be summarized in one word
success it's a radioactive element
when radioactive elements decay they can
damage the cells in the body that are
close by if it's in the air or something
like that
the particles don't go far enough to
cause any damage but if they're
incorporated in your body there are
cells very close by and these can cause
mutation which eventually could cause
cancer most important and the safety
program was the ability to predict and
hence predetermined radioactive fallout
when atmospheric testing stopped the
amount of strontium 90 that was
distributed across the world decreased
rapidly there's a bit of stron tonight
we got this from the main entrant in
well because albeit you can get
strontium a all over the world but this
is unique because this comes from
strength Ian strontium is you know is
useful as well it's you can make them
very reactive compounds with strontium
that's what people like me are
interested in doing and seeing how they
react and they might be as useful as
their magnesium counterparts which are
actually very useful in synthetic
chemistry strontium itself is an element
which I think may become more important
because as some of the other elements
become harder to mine because the
supplies are running out
I believe that chemists are going to
discover new reactions of strontium in
catalysts and things like that and will
realize that it has much more value than
we've thought up till now well we're
going to go up to the mine and what
we're going to do
is well have a look at it what's left of
it because unfortunately there's nine of
all left now you can see straight ahead
of you that a nurse garv there well
that's part of an old wood that was used
by the miners they were coming to - part
of the late main I've trying to improve
a educate people as to what happened in
the area and like most people who
collect historical data you become very
very passionate about this sort of thing
probably yeah I get so passionate that
I'm probably a boring old fast or
something you know so this is when the
granules of strontium metal is kind of
dark on the outside at the moment
hopefully we can get rid of kind of that
layer of tarnish by by foiling it is we
have our strontium so you can see where
we kind of sort of fighting off that
tarnish become a very metallic luster
it's quite pretty
so this is it this is where the old LED
mine was that they found a mineral that
was a little bit strange and they called
astron T and I T and then after more
work they were able to extract from a
new element and that of course became
known as strontium and we have it now on
the periodic table