Friday, September 25, 2015

Atomic Structure and Radioactive decay chapter 19

Today we learned about Radioactive Decay. One type of radioactive decay is Alpha particle decay. These are helium nuclei 24He. The mass changed by 4 and the protons change by 2 from parent atom to daughter atom. We also learned about beta particles which are electrons in which the mass does not change and the proton changes by one between the parent atom and the daughter atom. Gamma decay is always there accompanied by either alpha or beta decay.

More info: http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/ch23/modes.php

1 comment:

  1. Your descriptions of the effects of alpha and beta decay are good, but you should include that alpha decay decreases (not just changes) mass and atomic number while beta increases atomic number. Also, your last part on gamma decay is true, but I'm pretty sure that you can also have gamma decay without any accompanying alpha or beta decay (or at least we could in the dice game).

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