Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, man.

Oh, my life.

And so, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast episode 77, nuclear physics and radioactivity.

I'm your host, James Fodor.

So in this episode, we're going to look at nuclear physics and radioactivity, obviously.

Particularly, I want to talk a little bit about the physics of the nucleus and how the operations of the physics

of the nucleus of an atom leads to the phenomenon of radioactivity. I also then want to talk about

some of the applications of radioactivity in medicine, nuclear energy, a little bit about nuclear

weapons and some of the biological effects of radiation as well as some

misconceptions about radioactivity. Recommended pre-listing for this episode is

episode 8, History of the Atom, which will just give you a little bit of background,

which will help, although this episode will be mostly standalone, I hope.

So that being said, let's make a start. So first, I want to start by

talking about the nucleus, which is sort of the crucial aspect of the atom that we need to

understand in order to understand radioactivity. So an atom consists of the nucleus, which is

surrounded by electrons. Electrons don't contribute to radioactivity,

well, at least for the most part, what we're going to talk about, we're going to focus on the

nucleus. The nucleus of an atom consists of protons, which are positively charged, and neutrons,

which do not have an electric charge. Positive electric charge of the protons in the nucleus balances out

the negative charge of the electrons surrounding the nucleus, so therefore making an atom overall

neutral. Of course, atoms can become charged to become ions, but again, that's not a nuclear

effect, so that's not our concern for this episode. Chemistry is essentially the study of interactions between the

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