I was a tad bit confused when I walked into class and saw someone else standing at the front of the room. He introduced himself as Tom Vales, and he was actually very interesting and taught me a lot in the hour he was there. I did not know what to expect at first, due to the fact that there was a beeping device on the desk that beeped every few seconds, which I later found out it was used to measure the radioactivity of the different things he brought into class. Before this lecture, I really had no idea about radioactive substances and how many different things they could be found in. I also learned that radioactive elements are constantly decaying and trying to get back to their stable state, which is lead.

One of the things that I was most interested in was when Mr. Vales talked about Marie Curie’s discovery of radium and the epidemic of the pocket watches. As a theatre major, I was not sure if I would apply most of the things I learned in this class to my major. However, when he talked about the pocket watches, I instantly thought of the play that Suffolk put on last Spring called Radium Girls. In the play, the young girls would paint with radium onto these watches, and they would lick the paintbrush in between each stroke; much like what Mr. Vales was talking about. One of the main characters gradually became sick, starting with a bad toothache, then her entire jaw would hurt, and eventually it was hard for her to walk. I knew exactly what Mr. Vales was talking about while speaking of the pocket watches, and this made me much more interested because I could relate it to theatre. In the end of the play, the main character dies from radium poisoning, which shows how people did not realize the harmful effects of radium at the time of its discovery.

I learned from the lecture that radiation is measured in “sieverts”, or SI for short. I also learned that plutonium is the deadliest substance known to man, which I was completely unaware about. I really enjoyed this lecture because it was a change in the pace of the class, and because of the demonstrations of the different devices. Tom Vales taught a lot in his limited time, and I would enjoy another demonstration from him.