7 articles
Nuclear Chemistry & Radioactivity
Radioactive decay, half-life, fission, fusion, nuclear medicine and how new elements are made.
Which Elements Are Radioactive? The Complete List
Every element from 84 (polonium) upward is radioactive, plus technetium and promethium. Here's the full list, why some elements have no stable isotopes, and which radioactive elements you meet every day.
Nuclear Fission vs. Fusion: What's the Difference?
How fission splits heavy nuclei and fusion joins light ones, why both release energy, the binding energy curve and iron-56, chain reactions, and why fusion power is so hard.
Alpha, Beta and Gamma Radiation: What's the Difference?
The three main types of nuclear radiation compared — what each one is, how it changes the nucleus, how far it penetrates, how to write decay equations, and why the danger depends on where the source is.
Half-Life Explained: How Radioactive Decay Works
What half-life means, why radioactive decay is predictable in bulk but random for a single atom, how to calculate remaining amounts and elapsed time, and real half-lives from seconds to billions of years.
How Carbon-14 Dating Works (and Its Limits)
How radiocarbon dating uses carbon-14's half-life to date once-living things, a worked example, why it only works back about 50,000 years, and why dates must be calibrated.
How Are New Elements Made? Inside the Hunt for Superheavy Atoms
How scientists create new elements by fusing nuclei in particle accelerators, why each new element gets harder to make, how single atoms are detected, and how a discovery is confirmed.
The Island of Stability: Could Superheavy Elements Last Longer?
What the island of stability is, how magic numbers of protons and neutrons make some nuclei extra stable, the evidence from superheavy elements so far, and why reaching the island is so hard.