Encyclopedia > Beta rays

  Article Content

Beta particle

Redirected from Beta rays

Beta radiation is a form of ionising[?] radiation emitted by certain types of radioactive nuclei such as Cobalt-60.

They generally have a range about ten times as far as Alpha particles and an ionising[?] power about a tenth as alpha's. They are stopped completely by a few millimeters of aluminium

They are high-energy electrons ejected from a nucleus, in a process known as beta decay, where a neutron decays into a proton, an electron and an anti-electron neutrino.

n0 => p+ + e- + (νe-bar)

Due to the presence of the neutrino, the atom and the electron do not usually recoil in opposite directions. This observation is in fact what led Wolfgang Pauli to postulate the existence of neutrinos in order to prevent violation of conservation of energy and momentum laws. Beta decay is mediated by the weak nuclear force.

The electron gun inside a television tube could also be considered a source of beta radiation, which is stopped by the phosphors[?] inside the tube to create light.

see also Alpha particle, Gamma rays, Radioactivity, radiation physics,Nuclear physics



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Canadian Music Hall of Fame

... 1996 John Kay[?] 1996 Dominic Troiano[?] 1996 Zal Yanovsky 1997 Gil Evans[?] 1997 Lenny Breau[?] 1997 Maynard Ferguson 1997 Moe Koffman[?] 1997 Rob ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 23.6 ms