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
Radiation is fast particles or high energy photons, it doesn’t get far and it can’t stay around. What made Chernobyl problematic was not radiation directly, it is was the release of radioactive material that distributed in the environment. This radioactive material decays over time, emitting radiation in the process. Just like regular dust gets everywhere you had now dust particles made out of radioactive material that got everywhere. You can clean contaminated objects, but that is an effort that only makes sense if you need the objects again.
Edit: thank you much for the award!!
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