brief history of radioactivity
TRANSCRIPT
Radioactivity
Radioactivity• Unstable nucleus spontaneously emits small
particles and/or energy in order to attain a more stable nuclear state.
1895 – Wilhelm Roentgen
• Nobel Prize in physics in 1901
1896 – Henri Becquerel
• Discovered Radioactivity• Phosphorescence
o Uranium salts
• Nobel Prize in 1903
1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie
• First Radioactive elementso Radium and Polonium
• Poloniumo Half-life
Uraninite
Half-life
1899/1900 Alpha, Beta, Gamma
What is “radioactivity”?
• Emissions o Not affected by temperatureo Could change color of glass o Burn skino Create heat
• Rutherford and Soddy (1908)o TRANSMUTATION of one element to another
• The atom is not an indestructible unit!
Types of Radiation• Non-ionizing (low energy)
o Low frequency
• Ionizing (high energy)o High frequency
• Activity!o Label where you think non-ionizing and ionizing radiation are in
the spectrumo categorize
ionizingNon-ionizing
Nuclear Reactions
Nuclear Reactors
Importance