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Atomic and Condensed Matter
Question about final k.e. of alpha and Polonium after decay of Radon
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[QUOTE="dRic2, post: 6441795, member: 638830"] When you do conservation of mass/energy you suppose that at the final state the particles are infinitely distant so they do not feel any kind of force. This means that those 5.61MeV you got are only of kinetic origin (in the final state). If you consider the particles to be near each other they will feel an interaction. In this case each particle will have some kinetic energy and some potential energy, but the total energy difference is stil 5.61MeV. This means that the alpha particle will have a kinetic energy (slightly) lower* then 5.5MeV and will also have some potential energy to compensate for the difference. Good question though. The interaction between charged particles is the reason for the different curves obtained from ##\beta^+## and ##\beta^-## decays (which otherwise would have been identical). Hope I was clear *this assuming the interaction is repulsive. The sign of the potential energy obviously depends on the nature of the interaction (repulsion/attraction) [/QUOTE]
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Question about final k.e. of alpha and Polonium after decay of Radon
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