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Ask a Spaceman!

AaS! 173: How Does Radioactive Decay Work?

Ask a Spaceman!

Paul M. Sutter

Astrophysics, Science, Cosmos, Holes, Black, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Universe, Cosmology, Space, Physics

4.8853 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How was radioactive decay discovered? What are the different kinds of decay? How does quantum mechanics make all this happen? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!

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Thanks to Cathy Rinella for editing.

Hosted by Paul M. Sutter, astrophysicist and the one and only Agent to the Stars (http://www.pmsutter.com).

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Late 1800s

0:10.0

X-rays were all the rage, rightly so, because X-rays are awesome.

0:16.0

Everyone was going bananas for trying to understand them, see if there were other kinds of invisible

0:21.2

rays that you see bones and other cool stuff. And so there's this whole cottage industry

0:28.2

of making x-ray machines and learning about x-rays and playing with them. And then meanwhile,

0:37.0

in parallel to that, scientists began to

0:39.5

get interested in phosphorescent materials. These are materials or elements that glow in the dark

0:46.7

after being exposed to light, especially x-rays. If you shine a bunch of x-rays on a phosphorescent

0:52.1

material, and then you wait for it to get dark,

0:54.8

the material will glow. Now, these kinds of things have been known for literally forever,

1:00.7

but now scientists were starting to pay more attention to it after all. Interesting glowing

1:06.4

objects, x-rays, really loving this stuff. This is good, juicy science right here.

1:13.6

And French scientist Henri Beccarell was monkeying around with different phosphorescent materials.

1:20.7

He was taking pictures of them. He was smelling them. He was talking to them.

1:25.3

You know, the works. And at some point, in his investigation

1:29.6

of various phosphorescent materials and minerals and rocks and whatnot, he put a piece of paper

1:36.5

over a photographic plate and then put the phosphorescent material on top of the paper to see

1:43.0

if he could still take a picture of it.

1:45.2

Now, why did he do this? Well, remember, everyone was super fascinated by invisible rays. No one

1:50.5

could see x-rays, but they would show up on a photographic plate. And everyone was interested

1:56.1

in phosphorus materials, and they thought there was some sort of interesting connection between

2:00.1

the two. And that if there are x-rays, maybe there are other kinds of rays.

...

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