What particle is produced by the decay of thorium-214 to radium-210?

Video transcript

Hey everyone, we're asked to identify the missing particle from the nuclear reaction below first. Let's go ahead and balance our mass number, which we can label as a. We know that oxygen had a mass number of 15 and this is going to be equal to nitrogen 15 plus that of our missing particle, which we can label as a solving for a. We end up with a value of zero. Next let's go ahead and balance our atomic number, which we can label as E. We can see that oxygen had an atomic number of eight And this is going to be equal to seven from our nitrogen plus that of our missing particle, which we can label as the Solving for Z. We get plus one. So it looks like we have a positron emission. So I hope this made sense. And let us know if you have any questions.