Every once in a while, you will come across a piece of art that has that unmistakable “wow” factor. I’ve become a big fan of taking a barium reading at my local science museum to find out more about the art and how it is made. It is an excellent test for visualizing the process and for understanding the materials used. In this case, I took a reading of the piece of art and got a reading of the barium in the piece.
The article was written for a group of students and staff members of the science museum in the town of Barcaldine in Northern England. The article was originally published in The Art Newspaper in late October and was later published in their website. It was republished in a number of different local newspapers.
The article uses the term “barium” which is a relatively new term but is used to describe various types of radioactive elements. They explain the different radioactive elements that they use and some of the common radioactive elements. Barium is the most common radioactive element and is the one they were using in this piece of art.
Barium is one of the rare elements that has a very long half-life – about the time it takes for the radioactive decay to stop, depending on the element of barium. The half-life of barium is about 2.4 years. Barium has a very short half-life, so in the very next year or so it will stop. Barium does not decay into anything else.
Barium is one of the elements they were using in this piece of art.
It’s the barium that ends up in the art piece. Barium has a very short half-life – about the time it takes for the radioactive decay to stop, depending on the element of barium. The half-life of barium is about 2.4 years. Barium has a very short half-life, so in the very next year or so it will stop. Barium does not decay into anything else.
Barium is why we get these weird, bright blue, red, yellow, green, and greenish colors in our art. The blue is the short-lived radioactive isotope that is the main radiation source in the pieces. The red is from the naturally radioactive barium-96, and the green is the naturally radioactive barium-110. Barium is the second most abundant element in the universe, behind lead.
Barium is made of two radioactive isotopes, barium-102 and barium-105. When Barium-102 decays into Barium-105 it creates a second radioactive isotope, barium-110. Barium-105 is a long-lived isotope, so it will stay around for hundreds of years. Barium-110 is the short-lived isotope that is the result of a decay to Barium-105.
Barium-110 is extremely radioactive. It has a half-life of about one million years, or about 8 million years for a human. It has a half-life of about eight million years, or about 1.5 million years for a large rodent like the squirrel. The half-life of Barium-105 is about 1.2 million years, or about 1,000,000 years for a human.
So why would I need to take a shot of barium-105 to be able to go on a date with my crush? Barium has two half-lives, so it’s a little longer than the half-life of barium-110. Barium is also radioactive, so it will stay around for a while. Barium-105 is not radioactive at all, so it will decay to barium-105 and stop being radioactive.
