10.1 Radioactivity
10.2 Rates of Nuclear Decay
10.3 Artificial Transmutation
10.4 Fission and Fusion
What Happens When an Atom Decays?
Procedure
Using green beads to represent protons and purple beads to represent neutrons, make a model of a nucleus of a beryllium atom that contains 4 protons and 4 neutrons.
Atomic nuclei such as the one you modeled can decay by losing a particle that contains 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Remove the appropriate number of beads from your model to represent this process.
Think About It
Observing How many protons and how many neutrons are left in your nuclear model?
Using Models What element does your nuclear model now represent?