Why tritium is radioactive, while oxygen 18 is not.

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So, the title. As far as I understood, tritium is radioactive because it has more neutrons that protons and one neutron that’s not being held by a proton is slowly decaying through beta decay. Oxygen 18 has 10 neutrons and 8 protons, but it’s not radioactive at all. Why?

In: Physics

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s not that the number of neutrons are higher than protons, it’s that those specific number of neutrons can’t easily be held together by those specific number of protons.

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