Strontium

“ In passing from soil to man the ratio of calcium to strontium does not remain the same but at least it changes in a more or less definite manner. Actually most work on Sr90 uptake has been done by comparing Sr90 with calcium.
In order to use the data on calcium one has to find out how the calcium to strontium ratio is changed when the material is taken up into the human body. In the soil there is, on the average, about 1 part of strontium to 100 parts of calcium. In the human body the ratio is about 1 to 1400. ”

“ With chlorine it combines to form a chloride of strontium, a somewhat deliquescent salt, soluble in 2 parts of cold and in less of boiling water, and freely soluble in alcohol. With oxygen it forms an oxide.
Test. Strontium salts are precipitated by sulphuric acid and alkaline carbonates and sulphate. They are distinguished from barium by not giving such a decided precipitate with sulphates, and by not being precipitated by bichromate of potassium. From calcium, by sulphates of calcium solution giving a precipitate, and by concentrated solutions giving a precipitate with chromate of potassium. ”

“ Most feldspars, unfortunately, contain far too much, but rapid screening by X-ray fluorescence or flame photometry methods can weed these out and identify specimens low enough in original strontium to be useful. Otherwise, feldspar is an excellent closed system for rubidium and strontium; it remains closed even at temperatures high enough to melt many other minerals. It is not affected at all by the same degree of heating that will drive argon out of biotite. The rubidium-strontium age of feldspar usually comes close to the time of original crystallization of the rock. ”

“ In other words, do the [5] roots perforce take in everything that is presented to their surfaces, or have they the power of making a selection, absorbing the useful and rejecting the useless and harmful?
Daubeny (1833) described experiments in which various plants, as radish, cabbage, Vicia Faba, hemp and barley were grown actually on sulphate of strontium or on soils watered with nitrate of strontium. No strontium could be detected in the ash of any of the plants save barley, and then only the merest trace was found. ”

“ Mica contains a fair amount of rubidium, and it retains its radiogenic strontium very well. Furthermore, mica crystals are often associated or even intergrown with the slender, rod-shaped crystals of a mineral called apatite—a phosphate of calcium. It is justifiable, on the basis of geological knowledge, to say that the mica and the apatite grew at roughly the same time and thus presumably from the same liquid medium that became granite when it later solidified. Now strontium is geochemically similar to calcium, and some strontium will have gone into the apatite crystal in place of calcium. ”

“ The fused chlorides of barium and strontium suffer a very slight change in ammoniacal gas in many days; after more than a fortnight, the chloride of strontium, weighing about 30 grains, had absorbed only a cubical inch of gas, and a slight efflorescent appearance was seen on the broken edge.
A piece of fused chloride of silver, weighing about 80 grains, placed in ammoniacal gas, gradually absorbed more than 40 cubical inches. The action took place over the whole surface of the mass, but most speedily at the fractured edges. The chloride swelled considerably, and crumbled into powder. ”

“ The hydride, SrH2, was obtained by Guntz on heating strontium amalgam in a current of hydrogen. It is a white solid, which readily decomposes water in the cold and behaves as a strong reducing agent. It dissociates when heated to a high temperature and is not affected by oxygen. The monoxide or strontia, SrO, is formed by strongly heating the nitrate, or commercially by heating the sulphide or carbonate in superheated steam (at about 500–600o C) . ”

“ It was soon clear, however, that strontium was as much entitled to recognition as an element as calcium or barium. Hence it appeared that there was a numerical relation between the weights of the atoms of these three elements, barium, strontium and calcium, which corresponded to both the chemical and the physical properties of the elements. Several other similar groups of three were discovered by Döbereiner, and this, which was really the earliest germ of the Periodic Law, became known as Döbereiner's law of triads. ”

“ Since it has been shown by Professor Scheibler, of Berlin, that strontium is the most powerful medium of extraction in sugar refining, owing to its capacity of combining with three parts of saccharate, the idea suggests itself that the same medium might be successfully employed in the arts, and form a most interesting subject of experiment for the chemist. ”

“ Place the mixture upon charcoal, and expose it for a while to the reduction flame. The substance becomes reduced to sulphide of barium and sulphide of strontium, when it should be dissolved in hydrochloric acid. The solution should be evaporated to dryness, redissolved in a little water, and enough alcohol added that a spirit of 80 per cent. is produced. Inflame the spirit, and if strontia is present, the flame is tinged of a red color. ”

“ Celestine is much used for the preparation of strontium hydrate, which is employed in refining beetroot sugar in Germany. The mineral is used also as a source of various salts of strontium such as the nitrate, which finds application in pyrotechny for the production of red fire. ”

“ It is significant that calcium and barium show similar absolute magnitude behavior. In any case, the ionized strontium lines cannot be cited, as has sometimes been done, in demonstrating [Pg 152] that the absolute magnitude effect is due to pressure. What is actually shown is that the concentration of singly ionized atoms is more greatly increased at the expense of the neutral atoms than it is reduced by the formation of doubly ionized atoms. ”

“ Luminous sulphates of strontium may be obtained, like those of calcium, by the action of sulphur on strontia or the carbonate of this base, by the reduction of sulphates of strontia with charcoal. Blue and green shades are the most common. Sulphates of barium also present very remarkable phenomena of phosphorescence; but to obtain very luminous intensity a higher temperature is needed than with the other substances mentioned, and we have the same result when we reduce native sulphate of baryta with charcoal ”

“ It is known that at only about 300°C at moderate pressures argon is leaked from mica faster than it is being generated in it by the decay of radioactive potassium. The temperature needed to cause the rapid loss of strontium from mica is not much higher. Mica, especially biotite, will recrystallize and lose all its radiogenic constituents (argon and strontium) at temperatures where many other minerals show little or no change. ”

“ The a of beryllium, the b of calcium and strontium, and d of calcium, the e and f of strontium, are all there; j in chromium is the same as the central sphere in the b ovoid. In the central globe, k, is a pair of triangles as in hydrogen, consisting of only six atoms, which on the meta level revolve round each other, and break up into two duads and two units on the hyper.
Molybdenum (Plate VIII, 6) .
Molybdenum presents us with only two new forms, and these are merely four-atomed tetrahedra, occurring in pairs as object and image. All the other bodies have already been analysed. ”

“ We have accordingly learned to recognize two substances, namely, strontium and sodium, by the different lights which they give out when burning. To these two metals we may add a third. Here is a strip of white metallic ribbon. It is called magnesium. It seems like a bit of tin at the first glance, but indeed it is a very different substance from tin; for, look, when I hold it in the spirit-lamp, the strip of metal immediately takes fire, and burns with a white light so dazzling that it pales the gas-flames to insignificance. ”

“ Figure 20 Dogs about to be examined in a whole body counter.
How do dogs accumulate fallout isotopes in their bodies? This question was answered effectively by placing dogs in whole body counters and comparing the count from radioactive strontium-emitted gamma rays originating in their bodies with the count from a masonite phantom dog containing a known amount of radioactive strontium-85. It was found that female dogs increase their strontium retention while they are nursing newborn puppies. Strontium is much like calcium, which is a major component of milk. ”

“ Hydrogen, helium, and calcium are their chief constituents. "Flame-prominences," on the other hand, show, in addition, the characteristic rays of a number of metals, among which iron, titanium, barium, strontium, sodium, and magnesium are conspicuous. They are intensely brilliant; sharply defined in their varying forms of jets, spikes, fountains, waterspouts; of rapid formation and speedy dissolution, seldom attaining to the vast dimensions of the more tranquil kind. Eruptive or explosive by origin, they occur in close connection with spots ”

“ Young had drawn up at Hanover a catalogue of 103 bright lines in the spectrum of the chromosphere; at Sherman the number was extended to 273, while, at moments of unusual solar disturbance, there were glimpses of at least as many more. Sulphur, strontium, and cerium, are almost certainly proved to be constituents of the solar atmosphere, and zinc, erbium, and didymium are strongly indicated. ”

“ Examples might be multiplied, but there is not enough material at present available for a full discussion, and from what has already been said it is evident that the strontium stars constitute no ordinary absolute magnitude problem, although the condition that produces strong strontium lines in some dwarf stars may be something, like low surface gravity, that also prevails in stars of high luminosity. ”

“ Strong′-wa′ter, ardent spirits.—Strong escape (Shak.) , an escape accomplished by strength. [A.S. strang, strong; Ice. strangr, Ger. streng, tight.]
Strongyle, stron′jil, n. a strongyloid nematode worm.—adj. Stron′gyloid. [Gr. strongylos, round.]
Strontium, stron′shi-um, n. a yellowish, ductile, malleable metal somewhat harder than lead, existing as a carbonate in the mineral Strontianite (first found in 1790 near Strontian in Argyllshire) , and as a sulphate in the mineral known as Celestine.—ns. Stron′tia, the oxide of strontium—also Stron′tian; Stron′tianite, carbonate of strontia. ”

“ The United States Department of Agriculture in Food, The Yearbook of Agriculture 1959, p. 118, reported that strontium-90 from the United States and Russian atomic bomb tests had scattered radioactive strontium- 90 over the entire earth. It was first detected in animal bones, dairy products and soil in 1953. It is now in the bodies of all human beings regardless of their age or where they live. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. ”

“ Distinctly developed crystals are, however, of rare occurrence; they are usually acicular with acute pyramid-planes and are repeatedly twinned on the prism. Radiating, fibrous or granular aggregates are more common. The colour is white, pale green or yellowish brown. The hardness is 31/2 and the specific gravity 3·7. Strontium is sometimes partly replaced by an equivalent amount of calcium. The mineral occurs in metalliferous veins in the lead mines of Strontium in Argyllshire, Pateley Bridge in Yorkshire, Braunsdorf near Freiberg in Saxony ”

“ Yet among the elements the sea’s plants and animals concentrate are the very materials with which we are apt to be most concerned: Strontium, cesium, cerium, ruthenium, cobalt, iodine, phosphorus, zinc, manganese, iron, chromium, and others. Radioisotopes [6] of all these elements occur as by-products of human nuclear activities. Many concentrating organisms are microscopic in size and are frequently impossible to raise in captivity. It is apparent that we are faced with a research program of considerable challenge and proportion. ”

“ Now for a word as to Professor Michelson’s suggestion that an unvarying unit of measurement may be found in a certain light-wave, as observed in the interferometer. Everybody knows that each chemical element burns with colors of its own. When we see red fire bursting from a rocket we know that strontium is ablaze; when the tint is green it [218] tells us that copper is on fire, as when a trolley-wheel jumps from its electric wire. ”

“ According to this, the metals sodium, calcium, barium, magnesium, iron, chromium, nickel, copper, zinc, strontium, cobalt, manganese, aluminium, and titanium, whose vapors, with those of some few other substances, give the dark lines that cross the solar spectrum, should exist neither as solids nor liquids on the solar surface, but as blazing gases. ”

“ The ore or light material to be reduced—as, for example, the hydrated oxide of aluminum, alum, chloride of sodium, oxide of calcium, or sulphate of strontium—is usually mixed with the body of granular resistance material, and is thus brought directly in contact with the heat at the points of generation, at the same time the heat is distributed through the mass of granular material, being generated by the resistance of all the granules, and is not localized at one point or along a single line. ”

“ The former are by far the more numerous, altogether numbering more than fifty. Among the better known are such well known substances as iron, mercury, copper, tin, potassium, antimony, strontium, and nickel. The non-metals are more widely distributed and together made up of the bulk of the universe.
[32]
They comprise the gases—oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and chlorine, and such substances as sulphur, carbon, phosphorus and iodine. To the latter class also belongs a peculiar element called fluorine, which, when combined with hydrogen, destroys glass. ”