Radioactivity: Basics and Test

This post highlights the fundamental knowledge and key skills that form the basics of radioactivity. There is also a short online test for you to check your understanding.

The first things you need to know are descriptions of the atom (how models have changed with time) and what causes “radioactivity”. These two fundamentals are covered in posts entitled What Are Atoms? and What is Radioactivity? Click on the links to review these two definitions.

There is also a more detailed explanation of the evidence for our changing view of the atom in the post entitled Rutherford’s Gold Foil Experiment.

Next, you must be clear about the meanings of atomic number, atomic mass and isotopes. These basics are covered in posts entitled Atomic Mass and Atomic Number and Isotopes. As above, you should click on these links to review this information.

You then need to be able to use atomic number and atomic mass data to balance nuclear equations. At this stage, we are only interested in natural radioactive decay (alpha and beta) but stimulated decay, using neutrons, follows the same rules and all of this is covered in the post entitled Balancing Nuclear Equations.

Finally, you must understand what is meant by half-life and be able to carry out simple calculations to determine how much of an isotope remains after a certain time – or to calculate the half-life based on the rate of decay. This is covered, in a real-world context based on the Chernobyl incident, in a post entitled How Much Iodine-131 Remains? There are some tasks included in this post and you should complete at least the first one (both if you are confident) to confirm your ability to apply the concept of half-life to actual calculations.

Having revised these topics, you are now ready to complete a short online test (on the liveworksheets platform). When you have finished the test, select Email My Results to My Teacher then enter mrtarrant (usual symbol) cantab.net in the appropriate box. You will then get to see your score (and so will I).

Click here to take the test.