Watch alpha particles escape from a polonium nucleus, causing radioactive alpha decay. See how random decay times relate to the half life.

Watch alpha particles escape from a polonium nucleus, causing radioactive alpha decay. See how random decay times relate to the half life.

Watch beta decay occur for a collection of nuclei or for an individual nucleus.

Watch beta decay occur for a collection of nuclei or for an individual nucleus.

A work in progress, CK-12 Chemistry Teacher's Edition supports its Chemistry book covering: Matter; Atomic Structure; The Elements; Stoichiometry; Chemical Kinetics; Physical States of Matter; Thermodynamics; Nuclear and Organic Chemistry.

Student groups are given captioned photographs of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant facility and surrounding towns taken before and 28 years after the 1986 disaster. Based on the captions and clues in the images, they arrange them in sequential order. While viewing the completed sequence of images, students reflect on what it might have been like to be there, and ask themselves: what were people thinking, doing and saying at each point? This activity assists students in gaining an understanding of how devastating nuclear meltdowns can be, which underscores the importance of responsible engineering. It is recommended that this activity be conducted before the associated lesson, Nuclear Energy through a Virtual Field Trip.

The students will be exploring the concept of radioactive decay and half-life. They will be completing an activity, followed by discussion and and calculations. After discussion, the students will be completing a PHET simulation.

Earl Ubell is a pioneer among science and health writers in America. After a long, distinguished career at The New York Herald Tribune from 1943 to 1966, he went on to work at both CBS and NBC News. Prominent in the emerging scientific writing community in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a recipient of the Lasker Medical Journalism Award 1957. Milton Stanley Livingston was a leading physicist in the field of magnetic resonance accelerators. Working first with professor Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Livingston was instrumental in the development of the Berkeley cyclotron. Moving to Cornell in 1938, Livingston was part of the core group who established nuclear physics as a field of study. Choosing to stay with the Cornell cyclotron rather than follow colleagues onto the Manhattan Project, Livingston was involved in the production of radioisotopes for medical purposes. At the time of this interview, Livingston was director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a joint project of Harvard University and MIT.In this program segment Louis Lyons quizzes Earl Ubell about the lack of public knowledge and the perception of the nuclear bomb, while pressing Professor Livingston to explain exactly what nuclear fallout is, and the danger it presents.

This course integrates studies of engineering sciences, reactor physics and safety assessment into nuclear power plant design. Topics include materials issues in plant design and operations, aspects of thermal design, fuel depletion and fission-product poisoning, and temperature effects on reactivity, safety considerations in regulations and operations, such as the evolution of the regulatory process, the concept of defense in depth, General Design Criteria, accident analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and risk-informed regulations.

Are all atoms of an element the same? How can you tell one isotope from another? Use the sim to learn about isotopes and how abundance relates to the average atomic mass of an element.

Start a chain reaction, or introduce non-radioactive isotopes to prevent one. Control energy production in a nuclear reactor! (Previously part of the Nuclear Physics simulation - now there are separate Alpha Decay and Nuclear Fission sims.)

Learn about different types of radiometric dating, such as carbon dating. Understand how decay and half life work to enable radiometric dating to work. Play a game that tests your ability to match the percentage of the dating element that remains to the age of the object.

This course introduces fundamentals of radon physics, geology, radiation biology; provides hands on experience of measurement of radon in MIT environments, and discusses current radon research in the fields of geology, environment, building and construction, medicine and health physics.
The course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

In this activity, students will learn the concept of half-life of a radioactive material. Students will create and be able to recognize a graph representing the half-life of an imaginary radioactive element.

Find out what quarks are, how they were discovered and why they are very important in relation to protons and neutrons. There are different types of quarks which you'll learn about in this GCSE / K12 "Radioactivity" video from the Virtual School.