Declaration

I, ____________ student of ___________________ is doing project report

entitled “Nuclear Chemistry” being submitted to ___________________is
an original piece of work done by me.
(Signature)
Main Points : "Nuclear Chemistry", natural radioactivity, artificial
radioactivity, induced radioactivity, Cause of Radioactivity, Nature
and characteristics of Radioactive Substances, Alpha rays, Gama
rays, Beta rays, rate of radioactive disintegration, decay, Half Life
Period, nuclear fission, Nuclear Fusions Project on Nuclear
Chemistry
NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY INTRODUCTION
In ordinary chemical combinations, only the electrons
present in the Outermost orbitlas are involved i.e. they are transferred
from one atoms to the other atom remain unaffected. However, there are
certain phenomena in which the nucleus of the atom is involved. “The
branch of chemistry dealing with the phenomena involving the nuclei of
the atoms is known as NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY.
In fact, the only phenomena involving the nucleus of an atom
is RADIO ACTIVITY - both natural and artificial.
NATURAL RADIOACTIVITY :
The phenomenon of spontaneous emission of certain kinds of
radiations by some elements is called radioactivity or natural
radioactivity.
ARTIFICIAL OR INDUCED RADIOACTIVITY :
The phenomenon is which the artificial disintegration of a
stable nucleus leads to the formation of a radioactive isotope is called
artificial radioactivity.
Cause of Radioactivity
It has been found that the nuclei of those atoms are stable
whose ratio of the neutrons to protons (n/p ratio) lies in the range 1 to
1.5. If number of neutrons is plotted against the number of protons, the
table nucleus lie in a well defined belt, called stability belt as shown in
Fig. the nuclei with atomic number upto 20 have n/p ratio close to 1.
The nuclei with n/p ration lying above or below the stability particles so
that their n/p ration falls with in the stability belt. Loss of particle (2p
and 2n) increases the n/p ration where as loss of particles increases
the number of protons and hence decreases the n/p ratio.
Nature and characteristics of Radioactive
Substances
It is observed that an applying the field, the rays emitted
from the radioactive substances are separated into three types
called rays.
The rays are deflected in a direction which shows that they
carry positive charges the rays are deflected in the opposite direction
and the rays are not deflected at all showing that they carry no
charge.

PROPERTIES OF  RAYS :
(i) The direction of deflection of the  rays in the electric and
magnetic field show that they carry positive charge. It is found that
each particle carries two units of positive charges and has mass
nearly four times that of hydrogen atom.
(ii) The velocity of rays is found to be nearly 1/10 the 1/20 the of that of
light, depending upon the nature of source.
(iii)  rays ionize the gas through which they pass.
(iv)  rays have low penetrating power. They can penetrate through air
only to a distance of about 7 cm.
(v)  rays affect a photographic plate and produce luminescence when
they strike a line sulphide screen.

PROPERTIES OF  RAYS
(i) The direction of deflection of  rays in the electric and magnetic
fields shows that they carry negative charge. These particles possess the
same charge and mass as that of the electrons.
(ii) The velocity of  rays depends upon the nature of the source. The
speed of  particles varies from 3% to 99% of that of light i.e. in
same cases it approaches the velocity of light.
(iii) The ionizing power of  particles is about 1/100th of that
of  particles.
(iv) Their penetrating power is about 100 times greater than that
of  rays.
(v) Like rays,  rays affect a photographic plate and the effect is much
higher. However, there is no significant effect on a zinc sulphide
screen become of their lower kinetic energy.

PROPERTIES OF  RAYS
(i) They are not deflected in the electric and magnetic fields showing
these by that they do not carry any charge.
(ii) They travel with the same velocity as that of light.
(iii) As they do not have any mass, their ionizing power is very poor.
(iv) Their penetrating power is about 100 times more than that
of  rays. Thus they can penetrate through lead sheets as thick as
150 mm.
(v)  rays have very little effect on the photographic plates or zinc.
sulphide screen.
RATE OF RADIOACTIVE
DISINTEGRATION OR DECAY
 The rate of disintegration depends only upon the nature of
the radioactive element and the radioactive disintegration follows first
order kinetics and hence the expression for the rate constant ().

Where “No is the number of the atoms taken initially.

and “N” is the number of atoms present at any instant of time.
The equation is also written as :

Where a is the amount of the radioactive substance initially taken and a-

x is the amount present at time t.
HALF LIFE PERIOD :
The half-life period of radioactive element is the time in
which half of the original substance disintegrate.

where  is disintegration constant.

NUCLEAR FISSION
The splitting of a heavier atom like that of uranium - 235
into a number of fragments of much smaller mass by suitable
bombardment of huge amount of energy is called NUCLEAR FISSION.
e.g. Huge amount of
energy.
Nuclear Fusions
Nuclear fusions is defined as a process in which lighter
nuclei fuse together to form a heavier nucleus.
H11 + H11 ----> H12 + e10
Deuterium Position