Radioactive Decay

In order to explain what I found while studying radioisotope dating for my geology presentation I need to explain some basics of how it all works. If you already know this stuff, just bear with me, we will get to the revolutionary findings. Like I said before, I want to try to make this as kid-friendly as possible, so please realize that I may explain some relatively simple concepts. First of all, to understand all of this amazing research, you need to have a basic understanding of radioactive decay and how it works. That will be the prime objective of this week’s Clue.

When many people hear the word “radioactive” they think about bombs, secret laboratories, and government conspiracies. In reality, radioactive decay, in the general sense, really is not that extravagant. Nuclear merely means about the nucleus of an atom. Radioactive decay is happening all around you all the time and even inside your body, although most of it isn’t very dangerous. An atom is the smallest possible bit of matter (matter is just stuff), but it can actually split up into three parts: the protons, neutrons, and elections. Protons, which have a positive charge, like a magnet, and the neutrons, which have no charge, are clumped together in the center, or nucleus, of an atom. Since the electrons have a negative charge, they are attracted to the positive charge of the protons in the nucleus. But, instead of sticking to the nucleus like a magnet would, the electrons spin around the nucleus of the atom.
Because neutrons are neutral, the number of neutrons in the same element can be different. The atomic number (e.g., Uranium-238) is calculated by adding the number of protons and the number of neutrons together. Carbon has several different isotopes, including Carbon-12 and Carbon-14. Both have 6 protons, making them Carbon, but C-12 has 6 neutrons and C-14 has 8 neutrons. Having more neutrons than protons can cause an atom to be unstable and it wants to lose one of its neutrons. An atom can do this shooting our, or emitting, two protons and two neutrons (which is the same a helium nucleus) called an alpha particle (α-particle). This is how alpha decay works, and although there are other types of radioactive decay, this is all you need to know about radioactive decay to understand what I want to tell you about. Please don’t be shy about asking questions that seem simple, because asking simple questions is how I was able to understand the much harder concepts.