this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
652 points (98.1% liked)
Science Memes
11426 readers
2460 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !reptiles and [email protected]
Physical Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !self [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The thing you said that someone disagreed with was calling it ionizing radiation, which is a more general term and describes radiation with enough energy to ionize an atom or molecule, which means stripping off at least one of its electrons. That requires a lot less energy than activating nuclei in an element that is not radioactive to radioactivity. UV light and X-rays are both ionising radiation, but are not from radioactivity and cannot induce radioactivity. Of course a lot of radioactive radiation (α, β, γ) is also too low-energy to activate more nuclei. It depends on the energy of the radiation and the specific element you're trying to activate (how close it is to being radioactive, so to speak).
So like CommissarVulpin said - the real danger is more likely to be contamination
Yeah, like you can activate small amounts of material with alpha particles from a particle accelerator like Cockcroft did or really bombarding them with relatively low energy concentrated alpha particles like Curie's daughter did, but it's not generally a major contributing factor to the radioactivity from just being around alpha emitters since you really have to do it very intentionally.