I have a basic understanding of it. But mostly just from what I learned in high school. Also some from watching Periodic Videos on YouTube. Eli5: But why are there radioactive and other dangerous elements?
In: Chemistry
Essentially elements are a name that people came up with to distinguish one atom with one number of protons to a different atom with a different number of protons.
These elements behave differently mostly because of the way electrons arrange themselves when there are a different number of electrons, and the number of electrons is often the same as the number of protons.
Usually there are radioactive elements, because the number of protons and the number of neutrons determine how stable the nucleus of an atom are, and if a nucleus has a combination of neutrons and protons that is unstable, and there isn’t enough binding energy to hold the nucleus together, it can decay trying to find a more stable nuclei.
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