the.com/radioactivity
matter's quiet decision that it's tired of being itself.
means The spontaneous emission of energy or particles from unstable atomic nuclei as they decay into more stable forms.
from A marriage of Latin 'radius' (a ray or spoke of a wheel) and 'activity,' from Latin 'activus' (doing, in action). The 'radio-' part captures the rays streaming out; the rest captures the doing. The term emerged in the 1890s, when Henri Becquerel found that uranium fogged photographic plates in the dark, and Marie Curie — who coined the word 'radioactivité' — chased the phenomenon into the elements polonium and radium, the latter literally named for its ray-giving habit.
- discovery
- Becquerel found it by accident with foggy photographic plates
- banana dose
- eating one delivers measurable radiation from potassium-40
- half-life range
- from microseconds to billions of years
- Curie's notebooks
- still too radioactive to handle safely today
- glowing myth
- pure radium emits no visible light alone
marie curie's polonium — discovered element 84 in 1898, died from aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure
chernobyl disaster 1986 — reactor explosion released 400 times more radiation than hiroshima across ukraine and europe
fukushima daiichi meltdown — 2011 tsunami triggered three reactor core meltdowns in japan, evacuation zone still exists
bananas potassium-40 — naturally radioactive fruit contains potassium-40, unit 'banana equivalent dose' used in nuclear safety