Antimatter Creation: Michio Kaku's High School Experiment

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ISamson
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Hello,
I have read that Michio Kaku has made antimatter and photographed it when he was only a high schooler. I have read that the used Sodium-22 to produce positrons. How does that happen? I could not find some good sources of answers...
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Ivan Samsonov said:
I have read
Where? It is hard to tell what exactly the source said without seeing the source.

Sodium-22 undergoes beta+ decay, which means it emits positrons. You don't have to do anything, you just have to find a way to get enough sodium-22. You cannot really photograph these positrons, directly, but you can let them produce tracks in detectors (e. g. cloud chambers) and take a picture of these tracks.
 
Indeed, the most interesting question is, where I high schooler could get sodium-22? Nowadays the safety guidelines at high schools even under supervision of a teacher are such that it is almost impossible for the students to make interesting experiments (at least in Germany). I cannot imagine that it is allowed to handle even harmless portions of any radioactive material...:frown:
 
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vanhees71 said:
Indeed, the most interesting question is, where I high schooler could get sodium-22? Nowadays the safety guidelines at high schools even under supervision of a teacher are such that it is almost impossible for the students to make interesting experiments (at least in Germany). I cannot imagine that it is allowed to handle even harmless portions of any radioactive material...:frown:

He said he went to a local nuclear research company...