• Question: @Sophia what ways have you found to produce radioactive atoms so far?

    Asked by anon-201339 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 5 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      We can produce them in nuclear reactions by using high speed protons to knock protons or neutrons out of a nucleus.

      If you imagine you have a box that’s full to the top with tennis balls and then you stand a little distance away and throw another tennis ball into the box as fast as you can, a couple of the tennis balls that were already in there might bounce out. The nuclear reactions that I am looking at work in the same way.

      The problem is, it’s very hard to get just the right number of tennis balls to bounce out, so we end up making lots of different radioactive atoms.

      I hope that makes sense!

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