ScienceJuly 17, 2026
pitchblende
PITCH-blend
Definition
A dark, dense, brownish-black mineral that is the primary ore of uranium and the main source of radium.
Etymology
Derived from the German 'Pechblende,' combining 'Pech' (pitch or bad luck) and 'Blende' (a deceptive mineral that looks like ore but yields little metal).
In the news
Pitchblende is the raw, uranium-rich ore the Curies processed in massive quantities to isolate tiny amounts of radium, serving as the physical basis for their experiments.
Marie Curie and her husband Pierre spent nearly four years boiling down seven tonnes of pitchblende in a leaky Paris shed with no ventilation to isolate one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride, and the notebooks she kept during those years are still so radioacti
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