detection of radioactivity

All isotopes of a substance have the same chemical properties and behave in an identical manner. The advantage of a radioisotope is that its position can be detected very easily by the radiation which it emits. It has wide applications in various fields lik..

In order to find if blood is circulating to a wound or not, a radioactive isotope is injected into the blood stream. After a time period, blood from the wound is examines for its radioactivity. If no radioactive isotope is detected, it means that passage of ..

Ernest Rutherford, an energetic New Zealander working in England, was studying the properties of particles spontaneously emitted by radioactive substances. Of particular interest was a positively charged, relatively heavy emission named alpha particle. Quantities of such particles are em..

(i) Radioactive dating This gives us an approximate age of the rock or material containing the radioactive atoms. For e.g., A measurement of a fraction of uranium atom which have decayed into lead (by knowing the half life of uranium) tells us how old the rock is. (ii) Radiat..

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) - PET is a sophisticated version of radio isotope scanning. The principle behind PET scanning is as follows. Short - lived radio isotopes such as 1 1 C, 1 3 N or 1 5 O are produced and incorporated into a solution (of glucose) that can be injected into the body. A..

Background Radiation - In astronomy, the low temperature microwave radiation that arrives at the earth's surface from all directions of outer space is called background radiation. It is so named because it forms a background to all the radio sources that have been detected by radio telesc..

Pictorial representation of the a particles through different angles. A radioactive source S emitting a particles was collimated into a fine beam and made to fall on a thin gold foil. The a particles scattered in all directions. These produced bright flashes on falling on the f..