Atomic BOMB but not RADIOACTIVE

[orgthingy]

i heard that there is an idea (i don't know if it's true) that we can make ANY ELEMENT radioactive! and i thought "wtf"!

 

[orgthingy]

is it possible?!

 

[CompuChip]

Sure you can. Just shoot in a proton or a neutron with enough energy so that it sticks to the nucleus.
But probably the element will not be stable enough to survive for more than a few microseconds or even less.

 

[orgthingy]

so its NO USE?!

 

[CompuChip]

No, in fact it would take a lot of wasted energy
Only a few elements do have sufficiently stable isotopes to be useful. Otherwise, we could just let our nuclear reactors run on carbon instead of the much heavier uranium, and nuclear fusion would have been industrially usable by now.

 

[orgthingy]

Cool!

 

[LastGuyOnTheLeft]

Historical note: I think it was Joliot-Curie who got the Nobel prize in 1935 for the discovery of this thing. That you can take a substance and make it radioactive by bombarding it with (in their case) alpha particles.

 

[orgthingy]

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1935/index.html

 

[LastGuyOnTheLeft]

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1935/index.html

Yep. That's them all right.