• Question: Is any of your exsperements do you use Tellurium ?

    Asked by reenexox to Antoine, Daniel, James, Julie, Saima on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Julie Speakman

      Julie Speakman answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hello!
      I don’t use tellerium (to be honest I hadn’t heard of tellerium before I’m a Scientist!)…..but one of the other zones is called “iodine” and I work with that a lot.

      It is absorbed by something called the thyroid, which is in your neck. We take a special form of iodine, that is radioactive, and use it to treat Thyroid cancer. We can even use it when the cancer spreads…..because even if the cancer spreads to other parts of the body, like the liver, lungs or bones, the cancer still acts like little thyroids so will often still absorb iodine. If we can get iodine there, we can get radiation there, and that means we have a good chance of getting rid of the cancer and making the patient better.

    • Photo: James Hickey

      James Hickey answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hi reenexox!

      I don’t use Tellurium either. I don’t know anyone who has, and I also didn’t know what it was until “I’m a scientist” started. My experiments use complicated pieces of equipment – you can see a picture on my profile page.

    • Photo: Daniel Patten

      Daniel Patten answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      Hi reenexox,

      Unfortunately, I had never heard of Tellurium until this competition and so wouldn’t know what to do with it in an experiment!

    • Photo: Saima Rehman

      Saima Rehman answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      I am sorry, I never used it. I only heard about it in my chemistry class at school, when my teacher was teaching us about the periodic table. Because of your question, I now come to know about special type of food, called “Tellurite agar” for growing germs (bacteria), which cause severe sore throat and fever.
      Thanks for good question.

    • Photo: Antoine Buchard

      Antoine Buchard answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Hi reenox,
      Yes I have used Tellurium!
      Tellurium is in the same family as common elements like oxygen or sulphur, or even selenium (comes from selene, the moon in latin).
      Using tellurium is sometimes useful when you need a bigger, heavier element that has the same propertis than let’s say sulphur.

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