Nuclear chemistry beta particles

Rutherford s work has made him known as the father of nuclear physics with his research on radioactivity (alpha and beta particles and protons, which he named), and he was the first to describe the concepts of half-life and decay constant. He showed that elements such as uranium transmute (become different elements) through radioactive decay, and he was the first to observe nuclear reactions (split the atom in 1917). In 1908 he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances. He was president of the Royal Society (1926-30) and of the Institute of Physics (1931-33) and was decorated with the Order of Merit (1925). He became Lord Rutherford in 1931. 

Radiation is a phenomenon characterized more by its ability to canse biological effects than where it originates. Radiation was hrst discovered by German scientist Antoine Henri Becquerel, who received the Nobel Prize of Physics in 1903 for his work. Many of the terms associated with radioactivity come from those early pioneers in radiation physics Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923) and Pierre (1859-1906) and Marie Curie (1867-1934), who also received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for their work on radiation. Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) is considered the father of nuclear physics. He developed the language that describes the theoretical concepts of the atom and the phenomenon of radioactivity. Particles named and characterized by him include the alpha particle, beta particle, and proton. Rutherford won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909 for his work. 

The V represents the antineutrino v is the neutrino. Neutrino and antineutrino emissions serve to balance the energy and rotation before and after decay. Neutrinos have no charge and little mass as a result, they interact to a vanishingly small degree with matter and are difficult to detect without elaborate apparatus. The neutrino (or antineutrino) must be included in the decay equation to conserve energy, angular momentum, and spin. The neutron, proton, beta particle, and neutrino all have a nuclear spin of 1 /2. A fuller discussion of this topic is in nuclear chemistry texts such as Choppin et al. (1995). 

Attila Vertes (Tiirje, 1934) is a Professor Emeritus of nuclear chemistry at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest. He studied the scattering of beta particles for his Master s thesis in 1958 and has been dealing with different topics of nuclear chemistry ever since (e.g., Mossbauer and positron annihilation spectroscopy). 

In Section 10.1, we discussed the simplest fusion reaction [Equation (10.1)] in which a beta-plus particle—that is, a positron (+i )—is a product. Other common nuclear and subnuclear particles are given in Table 10.1. Having discussed the discovery and some of the chemistry of deuterium and tritium, we are now ready to take a closer look at nuclear processes, particularly those related to hydrogen. 

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