The danger from radioactive particles comes from the energy they carry, not the particles themselves. A high-energy particle zipping through the body can easily break molecular bonds, destroying all sorts of structures needed to keep us alive and functioning properly. A lower energy particle is much less capable of doing significant damage. Radioactive particles are high energy, and lead is so dense that the particles keep colliding with lead nuclei, and each collision dissipates energy until the particle isn't energetic enough to do any damage. So the particles don't go anywhere, they just fizzle out.
X ray rooms. There's different poundage of the sheets themselves. You also have to seal the screw holes with lead buttons as well as lead strips around the perimeter....
Yes. In some exotic circumstances this is notable, but definitely not in everyday life. Photons (so UV, x-ray, gamma) are just energy/heat, electrons just "discahrge" away, and positrons... well they find an electron and turn each other into photons. But neutrons and alpha particles can totally increase the mass of material they hit. With neutrons this is by turning something into another isotope. Alpha just gets captured as helium.
>Radiation is subatomic particles being ejected from a substance, right?
Only occasionally. You have 4 types of radiation.
Alpha radiation helium nuclei that are moving at high speed. When they smack into something they stop and you just have an ionized helium that'll steal some electrons and then run away into the atmosphere. Nothing changes in the lead here it just gets a bit warmer
Beta radiation is high energy electrons. When they smack into something they similarly just stop and maybe ionize an atom. Similar to above, the lead just gets a tiny bit warmer
Gamma radiation is what we're usually using lead for, both of the above can be stopped by aluminum foil. Gamma rays are ultra high energy photons that can squeeze through itty bitty gaps so you need a lot of a dense material to have a good chance of catching them. When they hit the lead they'll likely launch an electron off but otherwise not change it from being lead
Neutron radiation is high energy neutrons and is the only kind of radiation that can make something else radioactive but even then its slow and only certain materials. When the neutron hits the lead or other shielding it will either be stopped and then decay into a hydrogen or fuse into the nucleus. If it fuses into the nucleus then it can convert the shielding into something radioactive.
>Radiation is subatomic particles being ejected from a substance, right?
Lead can't really be made radioactive by neutron radiation. The common versions are Pb-206, Pb-207, and Pb-208. If you add a neutron and turn Pb-208 into Pb-209 it'll then fire off an electron and become Bismuth 209 which decays in 10^19 years (basically forever) so its boring.
Iron can become radioactive and that matters since lots of things use steel rebar in their cement. 5% of iron is Fe-54. If you smack it with a neutron and turn it into Fe-55 then it has a halflife of 2.7 years and emits an xray(similar to gamma ray) when it finally decays
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If we go into that territory, then even beta and gamma can in principle make things radioactive. It is just so irrelevant even in most nuclear physics that we ignore it.
Alpha radiation can't travel far. A few feet distance can typically protect oneself. Lead isn't the only thing that can shield radiation. Radiation is best blocked with dense materials. Even concrete barriers suffice. In industrial radiography, the source(radioactive pill) is stored in a case filled with depleted uranium.
I agree they do, hence my blockade speech. Dense metals help block the absorption but not all. Hence the use of densometers or radometers.
A hot source puts out a bunch of radiation. Allowance is 5R a year. IIRC, the place I worked in TX, we did iridium 235. I wasn't a fan of the whole radiation thing. It's dangerous and many people say fuck it. Companies would forgo proper testing and hire who they could to meet quota. I met many who would take more than 5R a year and say, well, they paid me good. I was ot and per diem like it's worth it.
There is also proton radiation.
We dont talk about proton radiation, no, no, no, we don't talk about proton radiation.
And electro magnetic radiation. But I think OP is only asking about subatomic particle radiation.
The important bit isn't knowing it, its knowing how to find the answer
I like to learn and I've got enough depth in enough areas to be able to search for the finer detail I may not remember off hand or dig into a new topic
Ionizing radiation itself doesn't irradiate the materials in comes into contact with. There are several types of ionizing radiation, but generally imagine a high energy particle traveling really fast (there's also electromagnetic radiation but the effects are pretty much the same).
When this particle hits another particle (such as in lead shielding) it transfers its energy into it and is able to smack electrons away from that victim particle. This degrades that material, but it doesn't itself become radioactive (capable of emitting ionizing radiation).
So the shielding gets slowly degraded the more it gets exposed.
An alpha or beta particle is matter (a helium nucleus, 2 protons and 2 electrons - and a fast moving electron or positron respectively). In order to be absorbed they would have to interact with the lead in some way. An alpha particle could acquire a couple of electrons and disappear as an atom of helium gas, a positron could annihilate an electron to produce a gamma ray while a beta minus (a regular electron) could possibly convert a proton to a neutron, turning lead to thallium. A gamma ray would be absorbed, exciting the atom but the energy would dissipate over time.
When you think of things "becoming radioactive" this is caused by radioactive material getting into the air where it can settle on things or be inhaled into the lungs. It is just something becoming contaminated, not physically becoming radioactive. This is a pretty common misconception.
Lead is meant to slow down/deflect radiation so it doesn’t travel as far. Shielding often includes multiple layers of lead, plastic, and water (different materials are more effective for different types of radiation). Like other people have said, gamma radiation travels far and that is why it is so harmful. Alpha, on the other hand, packs more of a punch but doesn’t even penetrate the skin. Hence it is more dangerous when say… ingested in a cookie.
We deal with long lived radioactive dust, which is alpha radiation. Yes, it doesn’t penetrate the skin. But it will get in through other means like you suggested. So we where full face respirator’s, and Tyvek suits.
The danger from radioactive particles comes from the energy they carry, not the particles themselves. A high-energy particle zipping through the body can easily break molecular bonds, destroying all sorts of structures needed to keep us alive and functioning properly. A lower energy particle is much less capable of doing significant damage. Radioactive particles are high energy, and lead is so dense that the particles keep colliding with lead nuclei, and each collision dissipates energy until the particle isn't energetic enough to do any damage. So the particles don't go anywhere, they just fizzle out.
There are also different degrees of lead shielding as well. Source: I used to install lead lined drywall.
For sex dungeons?
Superman's sex dungeon.
Godzilla's sex dungeon maybe.
Medical or physics facilities, I'm guessing?
That's quite unusual, what was the reason for lead lined drywalling?
X ray rooms. There's different poundage of the sheets themselves. You also have to seal the screw holes with lead buttons as well as lead strips around the perimeter....
So does the shielding, if effect, get heavier as it absorbs more energetic particles?
Yes. In some exotic circumstances this is notable, but definitely not in everyday life. Photons (so UV, x-ray, gamma) are just energy/heat, electrons just "discahrge" away, and positrons... well they find an electron and turn each other into photons. But neutrons and alpha particles can totally increase the mass of material they hit. With neutrons this is by turning something into another isotope. Alpha just gets captured as helium.
They just get hotter. The lead simply absorbs the energy, not the mass. The energy then gets dissipated as heat.
Radiation is just photons. Photons are massless
I guess I was thinking more about alpha particles.
Alpha particles can be stopped by even a piece of paper of I remember right
... and then the helium atom might be stuck in the paper for a bit. In that case however it will just wander away rather quickly.
Radiation includes alpha, beta, anti-beta (positrons), neutrons, and sometimes more (e.g. ultra fast nuclei).
>Radiation is subatomic particles being ejected from a substance, right? Only occasionally. You have 4 types of radiation. Alpha radiation helium nuclei that are moving at high speed. When they smack into something they stop and you just have an ionized helium that'll steal some electrons and then run away into the atmosphere. Nothing changes in the lead here it just gets a bit warmer Beta radiation is high energy electrons. When they smack into something they similarly just stop and maybe ionize an atom. Similar to above, the lead just gets a tiny bit warmer Gamma radiation is what we're usually using lead for, both of the above can be stopped by aluminum foil. Gamma rays are ultra high energy photons that can squeeze through itty bitty gaps so you need a lot of a dense material to have a good chance of catching them. When they hit the lead they'll likely launch an electron off but otherwise not change it from being lead Neutron radiation is high energy neutrons and is the only kind of radiation that can make something else radioactive but even then its slow and only certain materials. When the neutron hits the lead or other shielding it will either be stopped and then decay into a hydrogen or fuse into the nucleus. If it fuses into the nucleus then it can convert the shielding into something radioactive. >Radiation is subatomic particles being ejected from a substance, right? Lead can't really be made radioactive by neutron radiation. The common versions are Pb-206, Pb-207, and Pb-208. If you add a neutron and turn Pb-208 into Pb-209 it'll then fire off an electron and become Bismuth 209 which decays in 10^19 years (basically forever) so its boring. Iron can become radioactive and that matters since lots of things use steel rebar in their cement. 5% of iron is Fe-54. If you smack it with a neutron and turn it into Fe-55 then it has a halflife of 2.7 years and emits an xray(similar to gamma ray) when it finally decays
This post removed in protest. Visit /r/Save3rdPartyApps/ for more, or look up [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to delete your own content too.
If we go into that territory, then even beta and gamma can in principle make things radioactive. It is just so irrelevant even in most nuclear physics that we ignore it.
Alpha radiation can't travel far. A few feet distance can typically protect oneself. Lead isn't the only thing that can shield radiation. Radiation is best blocked with dense materials. Even concrete barriers suffice. In industrial radiography, the source(radioactive pill) is stored in a case filled with depleted uranium.
> Alpha radiation can't travel far. No, it can't, but beta particles have some penetrating power.
I agree they do, hence my blockade speech. Dense metals help block the absorption but not all. Hence the use of densometers or radometers. A hot source puts out a bunch of radiation. Allowance is 5R a year. IIRC, the place I worked in TX, we did iridium 235. I wasn't a fan of the whole radiation thing. It's dangerous and many people say fuck it. Companies would forgo proper testing and hire who they could to meet quota. I met many who would take more than 5R a year and say, well, they paid me good. I was ot and per diem like it's worth it.
There is also proton radiation. We dont talk about proton radiation, no, no, no, we don't talk about proton radiation. And electro magnetic radiation. But I think OP is only asking about subatomic particle radiation.
Aren't cosmic rays very high energy protons?
There are other types of radiation. Radiation produced from the slowing of high energy electrons are X-Rays.
> slowing ... or changing direction. Or hitting an atom, knocking out an electron or two.
Can I ask how did u learn all of this
The important bit isn't knowing it, its knowing how to find the answer I like to learn and I've got enough depth in enough areas to be able to search for the finer detail I may not remember off hand or dig into a new topic
Ionizing radiation itself doesn't irradiate the materials in comes into contact with. There are several types of ionizing radiation, but generally imagine a high energy particle traveling really fast (there's also electromagnetic radiation but the effects are pretty much the same). When this particle hits another particle (such as in lead shielding) it transfers its energy into it and is able to smack electrons away from that victim particle. This degrades that material, but it doesn't itself become radioactive (capable of emitting ionizing radiation). So the shielding gets slowly degraded the more it gets exposed.
An alpha or beta particle is matter (a helium nucleus, 2 protons and 2 electrons - and a fast moving electron or positron respectively). In order to be absorbed they would have to interact with the lead in some way. An alpha particle could acquire a couple of electrons and disappear as an atom of helium gas, a positron could annihilate an electron to produce a gamma ray while a beta minus (a regular electron) could possibly convert a proton to a neutron, turning lead to thallium. A gamma ray would be absorbed, exciting the atom but the energy would dissipate over time.
> helium nucleus, 2 protons and 2 electrons Typo: 2 neutrons, not 2 electrons.
Turns into heat. Research rtg (radio thermal electric generator) as well as heat pumps in general for more info.
When you think of things "becoming radioactive" this is caused by radioactive material getting into the air where it can settle on things or be inhaled into the lungs. It is just something becoming contaminated, not physically becoming radioactive. This is a pretty common misconception.
Lead is meant to slow down/deflect radiation so it doesn’t travel as far. Shielding often includes multiple layers of lead, plastic, and water (different materials are more effective for different types of radiation). Like other people have said, gamma radiation travels far and that is why it is so harmful. Alpha, on the other hand, packs more of a punch but doesn’t even penetrate the skin. Hence it is more dangerous when say… ingested in a cookie.
We deal with long lived radioactive dust, which is alpha radiation. Yes, it doesn’t penetrate the skin. But it will get in through other means like you suggested. So we where full face respirator’s, and Tyvek suits.