An old bottle of rubidium chloride from Merck.

Rubidium is a chemical element with symbol Rb and atomic number 37. Rubidium is a soft, silvery-white metallic element of the alkali metal group what colors flame with a red color (will be posted later) and it is a slightly radioactive.

Naturally occurring rubidium is composed of two isotopes: the stable 85Rb (72.2%) and the radioactive 87Rb (27.8%). Rubidium-87 has a half-life of 48.8×10^9 years (4880000000 years), which is more than three times the age of the universe of (13.798±0.037)×10^9 years. Natural rubidium has a specific activity 670 Bq/g, enough to significantly expose a photographic film in 110 days, so probably nobody will die from radiation poisoning from rubidium.

Rubidium was discovered in 1861 with the newly developed method of flame spectroscopy by Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff.

We had 62 g of rubidium metal what was opened and ampuled almost two year ago. There is a few picture about this over here: http://labphoto.tumblr.com/tagged/rubidium

9:30 pm • 29 November 2014 • 140 notes • View comments