Radiation has existed throughout the entire existence of earth. Scientists did not know about radiation until very recently because radioactive materials look the same as non-radioactive materials. It was not until February of 1896, when a French scientist named Antoine Henri Becquerel did an experiment using naturally fluorescent minerals to study x-ray properties, which were discovered by Wilhelm Roentgen, that scientists became aware of the existence of radioactivity. Becquerel “exposed potassium uranyl sulfate to sunlight, and the uranium-bearing crystals were later exposed” The Discovery of Radioactivity. People.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/nuclear/discovery.html (accessed 3/15/14) long enough, placed the crystals on photographic plates, which were wrapped in black paper. He believed the uranium would absorb the sun’s energy and emitted it as x-rays. His hypothesis seemed to be correct when the crystals produced an image on the plate. However, the next few days in Paris were overcast, so Becquerel placed the photographic plate and the crystals in a closed drawer. When he came back, the crystals had produced a strong, clear image on the plate, “proving that the uranium emitted radiation without an external source of energy such as the sun.” The Discovery of Radioactivity. http://www.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/03/4.html, (accessed 3/15/14). Becquerel then used a similar apparatus to prove the radiation he discovered was not x-rays. X-rays are neutral, and, therefore, cannot bend in a magnetic field. When different substances were placed in a magnetic field, the particles deflected in different directions, proving that radiation can have a positive, negative, or neutral electrical charge.
Becquerel did not continue pursui...
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... the chemical structure of the element into another element. After half of the radioactive element has decayed, there will be half of a different element and half of the original element. The two elements would not be split exactly halfway through the material. Instead, the element atoms are spread throughout the entire material.
Works Cited
Radioactivity. https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/nuclear-density/radioactivity (accessed 3/14/14).
Radioactive Half-life. www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/radioactive(accessed 3/12/14).
The Discovery of Radioactivity. People.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/nuclear/discovery.html (accessed 3/15/14).
The Discovery of Radioactivity. http://www.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/03/4.html, (accessed 3/15/14).
The Discovery of Radioactivity. People.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/nuclear/discovery.html (accessed 3/15/14
According to Helibron and Seidel (2011) nuclear medicine began as a simple experiment in the early twentieth century by George de Hevesy. De Hevesy started the experiment by deciding to test the effects of radiation on living things, beginning with bean plants, then onto furred animals, and then continued onto finding the effects of radiation on the human body, when he did this he became the first person to ever use radiation on a human being. He along with his partner E. Hofer, in 1931, consumed Deuterium which they had diluted with tea and found that traces of radioactivity stayed within their bodies for between eight to eighteen days. This was the first known use of radiation on humans (p. 1). This was just the beginning though, as time moved on the use of nuclear energy advanced and as it advanced it began to bleed into more subjects than those that it had been used in before, such as, nuclear medicine. Although it has its drawbacks, such as nuclear waste, there are many different benefits to nuclear medicine. Examples of such would be advances in therapy and treatment of disease...
The X-ray was first discovered in 1895 by a German physicist named W.C. Roentgen (“The Discovery”). W.C. Roentgen was working in his lab one day in 1895 and decided to send a high electrical current through a cathode ray filled with special gas. He realized that a dim green colored light was being produced, and decided to hold the cathode ray just above his wife’s hand. When he did this he observed that the light was able to penetrate human skin, but would leave all the bones visible. There is a picture below of the X-ray of W.C. Roentgen’s wife’s hand (“The Discovery”). He named it the X-ray because he did not know the identity of what kind of ray it was. He just named it X, because of its use in solving unknowns in algebraic equations (“The Discovery”).
The electromagnetic spectrum is a range of different types of radiations, this is energy that travels and spreads out as it goes. This range involves more than just visible light- small portion of the spectrum detected by the human eye- it goes beyond what the human eye cannot see. The two most important characteristics of the spectrum are wavelength and frequency. The electromagnetic spectrum can be divided into three different parts: the theory of visible light, the range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and how it benefits mankind.
Pierre and Marie hypothesised that radioactive particles cause atoms to break down, then release radiation that forms energy and subatomic particles.
The definition of radiation is the emission of energy electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles, especially high-energy particles that cause ionization. One of the scientist who discovered radiation was Henri Becquerel, the way the French scientist discovered radioactivity was when we was conducting an experiment with uranium-bearing crystals to sun light, then put it on a photographic plate, he then had set off his experiment for a few days because it was very cloudy and the sun wasn’t shining so Henri put the sample uranium and the plate the same sealed drawer. When he went to get the uranium and photographic plate, Becquerel then discovered that the crystals left a clear image on the photographic plate, Henri wondered how that could happen because there was no energy to produce the image but Henri then discovered that a piece of mineral which contained uranium could produce its image on a photographic plate without light, Henri realized that it was radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford among his many accomplishments one of them were the way he took part in radioactivity by...
The atom is made up of mostly empty space, but it still has many parts (Doc. 2). At the center is a positively charged ball of mass called the nucleus. Inside the nucleus are protons and neutrons. Protons are positively charged particles, and neutrons are particles with no charge (Doc. 3). The nucleus is surrounded by a cloud full of electrons (Doc. 3). Electrons are negatively charged particles (Doc. 3). They move around the nucleus in discrete regions called energy levels (OI). Protons and neutrons can be broken down into quarks
Radiation has fascinated many people for decades. Radiation is the result of nuclear decay and this releases radioactive isotopes in many different forms of radiation. Some scientists have conducted experiments using plants as test subjects for radiation. Researchers at the University of Edinburg have tested the effects of cosmic radiation against the growth of spruce trees and the rings inside them. NASA also did a study on how UV-B rays affect plant life and everything that depends on the photosynthesis resulting from those rays. Yet, not many people have written books on this subject
Radon gas was found in the 1870s, when some scientists were mining for ore in Ore Mountains in Schneeberg, Saxony. The area has a high content of radon in the tunnels because the area has been mined since the 1470s. The scientists later discovered that 75% of the miners died from lung cancer but it did not shut down the tunnels until 1950.
Radiation is the emission of electromagnetic energy that is given off in the form of high speed particles that cause ionization. During ionization radiation hits and knocks electrons from an atom creating charged ions. Due to the electron being stripped away from the atom this break the chemical bond. Living tissue within the human body is damaged and attempts to repair it but sometimes the damage is beyond repair.
Using an instrument invented by Pierre, Marie detected faint electrical currents in the air that had been bombarded with Uranium. This lead to two things: a conformation of Becquerel’s finding that the more Uranium there is the more rays it admitted, and her hypothesis that stated the rays emitted by the Uranium were caused by atomic properties. Her hypothesis was revolutionary because it suggested that the atom is made up of particles which would mean the atom was not the smallest thing in the world. Marie’s recent discoveries lead her to testing all known chemicals in order to see if they would emit the “Becquerel rays”. Radioactive was as term Marie coined to describe materials that gave off Becquerel
Uranium, a radioactive element, was first mined in the western United States in 1871 by Dr. Richard Pierce, who shipped 200 pounds of pitchblende to London from the Central City Mining District. This element is sorta boring but I found something interesting, they used it to make an an atomic bomb in the Cold War. In 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie and G. Bemont isolated the "miracle element" radium from pitchblende. That same year, uranium, vanadium and radium were found to exist in carnotite, a mineral containing colorful red and yellow ores that had been used as body paint by early Navajo and Ute Indians on the Colorado Plateau. The discovery triggered a small prospecting boom in southeastern Utah, and radium mines in Grand and San Juan counties became a major source of ore for the Curies. It was not the Curies but a British team working in Canada which was the first to understand that the presence of polonium and radium in pitchblende was not due to simple geological and mineral reasons, but that these elements were directly linked to uranium by a process of natural radioactive transmutation. The theory of radioactive transformation of elements was brilliantly enlarge in1901 by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the English chemist Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal. At dusk on the evening of November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, noticed a cathode tube that a sheet of paper come distance away. He put his hand between the tube and the paper, he saw the image of the bones in his hand on the paper.
Some researchers and experts suggest it came into view during the 1930s when radioactivity was discovered. We see the new idea of nuclear chemistry become noted when an article about it was written by Sam Seidlin. In the article, we saw he expressed much delight when a patient who was treated with radioactive substances (who had cancer) faced much success. This went on to bring much attention to the idea of nuclear medicine. Nuclear medicine would then start to be used starting with nuclear iodine which was used for thyroid function, thyroid cancer, gland imaging, etc. By the time the 1950s came nuclear medicine became very prominent. Doctors made much time in researching and educating themselves on radioactivity and biochemicals. After this, the first medical scanner was created by Benedict Cassen. A camera would also be paired with the scanner which was created by Hal Anger. These two inventions would turn nuclear medicine into a real medical
“The half-life of a radioisotope is the time required for half the atoms in a given sample to undergo radioactive decay; for any particular radioisotope, the half-life is independent of the initial amount of...
The process of changing of unstable nucleus into another element is called transmutation.The above phenomenon is called Radioactivity.
Scientists and engineers have been able to enhance our lifestyles by understanding and using the Laws, Concepts and Principles of Optics and how they are applied in Optical Instruments. The key concepts are: