Welcome Fall 2011 Unstable Nucleus Class! Time to learn about Radiation!!!

It's time to get this blog going again...with some readings for next week!  We already have a lot of ideas to figure out in this class.   Beginning with:  what exactly is the distinction between the words "radiation" and "radioactivity"?  Where in nature and technology do we encounter different forms of radiation and radioactivity?

The articles in the readings for this week will show some places where these topics are popping up in the (mostly recent) news.  If you followed the lecture pretty well, then you can skip straight to those articles.  If you'd like a little more review, a decent introduction to radiation and radioactivity can be found at the How Stuff Works website:  http://science.howstuffworks.com/radiation.htm.

Readings for this week:

1.  Granite Countertops!  This is one of my favorite weird articles for this class - New York Times article on radioactive countertops.

2.  Food affected by the Fukushima disaster in Japan.  This is an ongoing concern right now.  This is not the greatest article ever (it's pretty confusing) but will get us started as we watch for more news on the subject:  Bloomberg article on contaminated mushrooms and other foods.

4.  Cell phone radiation.  Here's a status update from May on what's known about cell phone radiation and cancer, from CNN.

5.  Radiation used in cancer treatments.  Many types of radiation are used to treat cancer.  Here's a recent article from the Telegraph on a radiation "miracle cure."

6. Radiation exposure from air travel.  This is an LA Times article from last winter that brings up lots of interesting stuff to discuss.

An interesting question to ask (no, you won't be quizzed on this!) is whether the radiation discussed in each article comes from radioactivity or not.  As you read through this, also take note of some of the specialized vocabulary that comes up - in the next class we will work on clarifying some of the terminology and understanding radiation better.