In the previous post, we talked about nuclear binding energy, and discussed a graph with important implications for the use of nuclear processes as sources of energy: The key to predicting what types of nuclear reactions are going … Read more
In the previous post, we discussed the energy of nuclear reactions and the key point we learned was that nuclear reactions are associated with enormous amounts of energy because of the mass difference between the reactants and products. For example, … Read more
Nuclear reactions are associated with enormous amounts of energy. For example, the energy coming from the sun is a result of a nuclear reaction, the devastating power of nuclear bombs is also the output of nuclear reactions. So, … Read more
Carbon dating is a technique that measures the age of ancient objects containing carbon. The 14C isotope of carbon is radioactive and is only accumulated in living organisms. Once dead, the amount of 14C, and thus its ratio … Read more
In these practice problems, we will work on the kinetics of radioactive reactions. Most often, in chemistry at least, you will be asked to determine the activity, quantity, the decay rate of radioactive isotopes, the time required to drop the … Read more
Despite some fundamental differences between chemical and nuclear reactions, they both share a common feature which you heard so many times – the equation must be balanced! For chemical reactions, the equation is balanced by equalizing the number of given … Read more
In all the chapters we covered so far, we dealt with chemical reactions where the changes occur as a result of electron redistributions. For example, the reaction between sodium metal and chlorine gas is an example of a redox reaction … Read more
