New Elements

Marie and her husband spent many hours in the science lab investigating pitchblende and the new element. They eventually figured out that there were two new elements in pitchblende. They had discovered two new elements for the periodic table.Marie named one of the elements polonium after her homeland Poland. She named the other radium, because it gave off such strong rays. The Curies came up with the term radioactivity to describe elements that emitted strong rays.