Abstract
It gives us fear, when it leads to natural catastrophes. It gives us joy when it produces electricity. No matter what it is doing, it immediately grabs our attention. Its mysterious appearance even names rock songs: radioactivity. There are three things which make radioactivity so interesting. The first is that it leads to a type of radiation which we cannot see (at least not with our eyes) and which harms us. The second is that using it for our benefit (electricity) leads to a type of waste that we have to store for a long time. And finally, the third fact, it tells us that our elements do not last forever, at least not all of them: they decay. This means that a lunch box filled with uranium will no longer be filled with uranium after quite some time.
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© 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Bahr, B., Lemmer, B., Piccolo, R. (2016). Radioactive Decay. In: Quirky Quarks. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49509-4_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49509-4_40
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-49507-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-49509-4
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