Nuclear Concepts: Radioactivity

30 lessons, pages 1471–1500.

  1. Nuclear Change Versus Chemical Change — Changes in the nucleus compared with electron rearrangement
  2. Nuclide Symbols and Nuclear Counting — Atomic number, mass number and neutron count revisited
  3. Stable and Unstable Nuclides — Why some nuclei transform spontaneously
  4. What Radioactivity Means — Spontaneous nuclear transformation and emitted radiation
  5. Alpha Particles and Alpha Decay — Helium nuclei, mass-number change and charge balance
  6. Beta-Minus Emission — Neutron-to-proton conversion and electron emission
  7. Beta-Plus Emission — Proton-to-neutron conversion and positron emission
  8. Electron Capture — Inner-electron capture and atomic-number change
  9. Gamma Radiation from Nuclear Excitation — Energy emission without changing Z or A
  10. Comparing Alpha, Beta and Gamma — Particle identity, charge, penetration and shielding trends
  11. Balancing Nuclear Equations — Conserving mass number and electric charge
  12. Decay Chains and Daughter Nuclides — Following sequential transformations without skipping steps
  13. Activity as Decays per Second — Using the becquerel and distinguishing activity from dose
  14. The Meaning of Half-Life — Time for an expected undecayed population to halve
  15. Repeated Half-Life Calculations — Successive halving of nuclei, mass and activity
  16. Exponential Decay and Decay Constant — Connecting N, lambda and half-life at an introductory level
  17. Half-Life Graphs — Reading time and remaining fraction from a decay curve
  18. Why Half-Life Is Statistical — Unpredictable individual events and predictable large populations
  19. Background Radiation and Measurement — Sources, counting variation and background subtraction
  20. Detection of Ionising Radiation — What a detector counts and why count rate differs from activity
  21. Ionisation and Matter — How emitted radiation can remove electrons from atoms
  22. Irradiation and Contamination — Exposure to a source versus radioactive material transfer
  23. Distance, Time and Shielding — Qualitative ways exposure changes with geometry and barriers
  24. Medical Tracers — Selecting an isotope by detection route and practical half-life
  25. Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine — Distinguishing imaging, treatment and dose control
  26. Radiometric Dating Basics — Parent–daughter change and half-life assumptions
  27. Carbon-14 Dating and Its Scope — Organic material, exchange while living and age estimation
  28. Nuclear Fission as a Chain Process — Neutron-induced splitting, energy and further neutrons
  29. Nuclear Fusion and Stellar Energy — Light nuclei combining under extreme conditions
  30. Radioactivity: Integrated Review — Linking symbols, decay equations, half-life and applications