Nuclear Chemistry

Types of Particles

Every atom has three parts that everyone should know about: the proton, the neutron, and the electron. Below are the symbols for each, respectively:
 

11p+

10n

e-

Isotope Notation

In order to understand the symbols in the table above, a little explanation might help.
^A_ZX
What you see above is the basic notation for all elements and their isotopes. This basic notation is, as you might have guessed, isotope notation. The "A" stands for the total mass of neutrons and protons, a.k.a. mass number. "A" is always a whole number. "Z" is the atomic number, which is the number of protons. "X" is the element symbol itself, such as O (oxygen), N (nitrogen), or Au (gold). The atomic mass number is the average of all isotopes of an element.

Just what exactly is an isotope anyways? An isotope occurs when a particular element loses or gains neutrons. On the other hand, when the number of protons change, a new element is made.

Radioactivity

First things first.  Radiation is the natural change of one isotope of one element to an isotope of another element.  This occurs through three main ways.  The first is the loss of an alpha particle.  The alpha particle is written like this:

            ⁴₂He

The second is called the beta particle, which is symbolized by:

               ⁰_-1ß

The last is the gamma particle, which has no charge, but is pure energy.

A radioactive material's half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactivity to decay into another element.  The equation for this is:

N = N_o(1/2)ⁿ