: How does something become radioactive?

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I stuck on a documentary about Chernobyl, there was a clip of a pair of boots the fireman were wearing near the plant and the levels of radiation went stupidly high. How can an object like the boots show such a high reading but other objects in the room show lower readings? They also shown a cloth the nurses used on the fireman and the reader did the same thing.

Howcome that happens? Does radiation “stick” to objects?

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

“Radiation” here is the energy and particles released from radioactive material.

What you’re describing is *contamination* – radioactive material in unwanted/bad places. It’s usually just in the form of a powder, like sand or granulated sugar.

If you have a chunk of uranium, then it’s putting out energy. If you scrape some of that off on to a pizza, now you’ve got uranium on the pizza and the pizza is contaminated.

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