• Question: What chemicals or substances emit strong waves of alpha, beta or gamma radiation?

    Asked by jakehopkins2k10 to Hywel, Joseph, Patience, Poonam, Rachael on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Unstable radioactive isotopes emit radiation. Things like Strontium-90. Other isotopes of the same elements (same number of protons but different number of neutrons) may be stable and so not emit radiation.

    • Photo: Poonam Kaushik

      Poonam Kaushik answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Radioactive elements!

    • Photo: Dr Hywel Jones

      Dr Hywel Jones answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      All those type of emmisions are generally regarded as “radioactivity” and there are many different types of radioactive material in the world. SOme occur naturally while some have been made by us as as side effect of nuclear fusion and fission reactions used in both bombs and power stations.
      Some commercially avalable radio active materials are listed here with the types of emissions:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionucleide#List_of_commercially_available_radionuclides

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