Nuclear Chemistry
IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: Radioactivity, the spontaneous decay of an unstable isotope to a more
stable one, was first discovered by Henri Becquerel in 1896. Marie Curie and her
husband expanded on his work and developed most of the concepts that are used
today.
Throughout this book, you have been studying traditional chemistry and chemi-
cal reactions. This has involved the transfer or sharing of electrons from the electron
clouds, especially the valence electrons. Little has been said up to this point regard-
ing the nucleus. Now we are going to shift our attention to nuclear reactions and,
for the most part, ignore the electron clouds.Keywords and Equations
No specific nuclear equations are provided, but review first-order equations in the
Kinetics chapter.Nuclear Reactions
Balancing Nuclear Reactions
Most nuclear reactions involve breaking apart the nucleus into two or more different
elements or subatomic particles. If all but one of the particles is known, the unknown
particle can be determined by balancing the nuclear equation. When chemical equa-
tions are balanced, coefficients are added to ensure that there are the same number of
each type of atom on both sides of the reaction arrow. To balance nuclear equations, we
ensure that there is the same sum of both mass numbers and atomic numbers on bothCHAPTER
17KEY IDEAENRICHMENT