Thursday, September 24, 2015
Radioactive Decay
Today in class, we learned about the three basic forms of radioactive decay: alpha, beta and gamma. The main difference between each type of radiation is their effect of the mass number and atomic number of the element. In alpha radiation, the mass number is decreased by 4, and the atomic number is decreased by two; in beta radiation, the mass number is unaffected and the atomic number increases by one; in gamma radiation, neither the mass nor atomic number is affected due to the light energy that is given off in the gamma radiation. The basics of radiation are fairly easy for me to grasp, since there are only two big things that you have to remember for each type of radiation.
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I agree with Kyle, the entire concept wasn't very hard to learn. You only need to know how the certain type of decay effects the Mass Number and the Atomic Number.
ReplyDeleteI like how you not only stated the types of radioactive decay that we learned, but also explained them so we could tell them apart. I also agree on the point you made about radiation types being easy to understand because only two of them have an affect on anything and their is only 2 things being affected.
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