Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello!

We had to pick from the elements for our science projects this semester. I chose copper. I have to focus primarily on CU 63 & CU 65. My main subject matter will be the uses for both elements, the process in which CU 63 is turned into CU 64 (and how much is needed) and how CU64 is used in PET scan to detect cancer, gastro diseases and other illnesses.

I was able to gain a basic understanding how those isotopes to put together my vision but unfortunately actually finding specific about the uses and processes has been hard to find online (wish I knew that when I picked copper as my element!)

Does anyone have suggestions as to where I could find these answers, or at least more information that I could put together into a project? Thanks so much in advance!

Hi Mandy,

The uses of copper isotopes in modern medicine sounds very interesting to me. I don't know that much about this topic, but let me suggest a few sources that you can use to start your research. A quick web search of copper isotopes revealed a Wikipedia article on copper isotopes as well as a specific article on Copper 64. While I don't recommend you use Wikipedia as a final source in your research, you should consider looking at the references that are cited in the article for the initial information. It can be a very good place to start. Another great place to look is PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed). This is a website that essentially collects all of the scientific articles being published and puts them in one place. Much of the work will likely be significantly more detailed than what you are looking for, but you can filter for "review articles" which tend to be somewhat broader. While you may not be able to understand every detail, I think you should be able to read for broader concepts fairly well. A quick search on PubMed gave me articles on the use of copper isotopes in the diagnosis of Wilson's disease and several articles on the use of copper isotopes in PET imaging, all of which might be useful to you.

There doesn't seem to be any one source that will give you uses for each copper isotopes, so you'll have to synthesize information from multiple sources, which is really the point of a research project anyway. Maybe someone else here can give you some other ideas for more general sources. There are also a number of companies that appear to sell Cu 65 and Cu 63, and if you contact one of them, they may be able to give you more information about the uses of these isotopes and sources to explore.

I hope this was helpful, and good luck! Let us know if there is anything else we can help with by posting again in this thread.