2. Chemistry
Isotopes
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So now that we've introduced isotopes in our previous lesson videos, in this video we're going to introduce radioactive isotopes. And so radioactive isotopes are really just isotopes themselves that are going to be very very unstable and they will eventually break down and emit energy in the form of razor particles. And so, if we take a look at our image down below over here on the left hand side, notice we're showing you the radioactivity of a carbon 14 isotope. And so, this here represents the nucleus of the carbon 14 atom and, what you'll notice is that it is going to have 6 protons that you can see here in red and 8 neutrons and we did discuss the Carbon 14 isotope in some of our previous lesson videos so that should be a little bit familiar. Now, this is going to give the Carbon 14 isotope a mass number of 14 which is why it's called Carbon 14. Now, once again, Carbon 14 is a radioactive isotope so it is unstable and it will break down and emit energy in the form of razor particles. And so, this arrow that you see right here represents released energy and this other arrow that you see right here represents released subatomic particles. And so again, this is going to break down and decay over time. Now, the rate that radioactive atoms decay and break down over time is actually pretty consistent and so from that consistency, scientists can determine what's known as a half life. And so the half life is the exact amount of time that it takes for half of all of the radioactive atoms in a sample to break down and decay. And so, from this half life, scientists can use that half life for meaningful purposes. They can use it for, for medicine and they can also use it for radiometric dating of fossils. And so, you'll notice here in our image on the right hand side, we're showing you an, a person getting an MRI which uses radioactive isotopes and we're also showing you some fossils here and again, the radiometric dating of fossils relies on isotopes. And so this here concludes our brief introduction to radioactive isotopes and we'll be able to get some practice applying these concepts as we move forward. So I'll see you on our next video.
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