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Remeber playing with magnets as a kid? The forces of positive and negative played out well here. When you touched the two same poles of the magnet together the magnets would push away from each other, and if they were powerful enough you might have been lucky to be able to make a slingshot without string or a stick. If you touched two opposite poles together the magnets attracted each other, and if you had powerful enough magnets it would be nearly impossible to remove them from each other.
Imagine all of these forces swirling around each other and constantly changing. It is quite easy to see how fragile of a system this could be.
To understand what radiation is and why it exists one first needs to understand how what makes up the world around us. No doubt everyone has heard that atoms are the building blocks of all that exists. Atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons and are constantly in a state of motion. The protons and neutrons are in the radius of the nucleus (nuclei when referring to more than one nucleus, such as the "nuclei of two atoms") with the electrons in orbit around it. Protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged. Neutrons are neutral.
Depending on the makeup of a particular atom in terms of its protons, neutrons, and electrons, the atom is said to be stable or unstable. Without getting too technical, atoms always "want" to be stable. They will reject whichever particles cause them to be unstable. However, the very actions that cause the atoms to break apart and reject particles can often trigger more instability. Often times, the decay of the atoms ends up becoming a chain reaction, where one particular atom will reject particles, making it unstable. Then more particles are rejected, causing more instability. Eventually, the atoms will settle into a stable state, but it could take months, years, or even millenia.
During this breakdown process, various kinds of particles are emitted. The two most common particles are alpha particles and beta particles, which are both a form of radiation. Alpha radiation is the rejection of two proton particles and two neutron particles in one bonded particle referred to as a helium nucleus (since it has the same number of protons and neutrons as an atom of helium). Beta radiation is the rejection of one electron particle. Since the particles are all held together by various types of energy, there is most often another type of radiation associated with the emission of alpha and beta radiation: gamma radiation. Gamma radiation is a very high-intensity, permeating ray. Often times, gamma radiation will simply pass directly through our bodies without any sign of damage; alpha and beta radiation must be internally absorbed by our bodies to cause significant damage. The whole idea of pieces of matter flying off into the environment and potentially harmful rays being "beamed" out into the world can be quite scary. In fact, people often hear the word radiation, and they panic thinking about the implications that word has.
In fact, radiation is a natural evolutionary requirement. Due to radiationin part, the human body has changed into what it is today. Our bodies are even made to handle the radiation that is naturally occuring in the environment. Examples of such radiation even exist in our own body! Our body requires Potassium to function properly. It is one of the basic building blocks of muscle tissue and is the largest source of internal radiation in our body. About 4,000 potassium molecules give off radiation each second! There are other radiation sources in the environment as well from soil, rocks, and vegation, even from space. Thus, we are always surrounded by radiation and radioactive atoms. As a matter of fact, our bodies require them! As with anything in life, there is a safe level that our bodies can tolerate. See the Bringing It Together section for information about what the limits of tolerated radiation.
At this point a discussion of radioactive materal should be had. Radioactive material is that which emits radiation itself.
Continue on to the The Science section, or you can return to the Education page.
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Last updated: Thursday, March 5, 2009 9:19 AM