I understand something can become radioactive when it is polluted with radioactive material, The Claw (the crane which was used to clean up Chernobyl) comes into my mind. There is bad stuff on it -> radioactive.
But what about materials which are exposed to emission only? What changes in the material?
What happens for example when a steal plate is put inside LHC and bombarded with high energy particles? Does the protons collide with the electrons, become neutrons, so the iron in the “steal plate” changes into an isotope which is unstable, so it becomes radioactive?
In: Physics
Emissions are how stuff becomes radioactive compared to radioactive contamination (uranium dust for a crappy example).
Not all of the neutrons that hit an atom cause it to split. Some are absorbed into the atom giving it a +1 neutron,
If you do this enough, you can make fun elements like plutonium (used in nuclear weapons). But for materials that aren’t supposed to be plutonium, they “react” to that extra neutron by becoming radioactive.
If I shoved a chunk of gold into a reactor for long enough and if it was powerful enough, it would become gold 198 (radioactive). It doesn’t like that so it decays. That decay is what you see as radiation.
There’s a 50/50 chance I’ve made a mistake though, I’m not a physicist. Hopefully Cole’s law will kick in and a actual physicist will chime in
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