in this video we're going to go over uh radioactive decay which is part of nuclear chemistry so let's go over the different particles that you need to know and let's start with the alpha particle the alpha particle has a mass of four and a charge of two the alpha particles is basically it's the same or equivalent to the nucleus of a helium atom so it can be written this way as well that's an alpha particle the next one that you need to be familiar with is the beta particle which can be written like this it has a a mass of zero and a charge of negative 1 the beta particle is essentially the same as an electron next in line we have the positron particle which is the anti- particle of an electron so it has the beta symbol but instead of having a negative charge it has a plus one charge so that's the positron and then after that you have the proton which is much more massive than an electron the proton has a mass of one and a charge of one and then you have the neutron the neutron is neutral it has a massive one but a charge of zero and then finally the gamma particle the gamma particle is basically a high energy Photon it has the gamma symbol but it has a mass of zero and a charge is zero so those are some particles and their symbols that you need to know so let's go over some examples let's say if we have nitrogen 13 and let's say it produces a beta particle which can also be represented as the beta symbol or you can put e for an electron so that's the beta particle what's the missing element now the masses and the charges must be the same on both sides so 0 + 13 is equal to 13 so the missing Mass has to be 13 now what about the charge -1 plus what number is 7 -1 + 8 is seven so the missing number is eight to find a missing element go to the periodic table and look for the element that has an atomic number of eight so this is oxygen so here what we have is oxygen 13 so that's how you can find the missing element so this is called beta Decay the reason why it's called beta Decay or beta production is because this reaction is producing electrons it's producing beta particles now let's go back to uh this reaction we need to understand understand the effect of beta Decay so notice that beta Decay did not change the mass of the new element the mass stay the same so any during beta Decay the mass will be constant however the atomic number changes the atomic number increased from seven to 8 so beta Decay causes the atomic number to go up and the atomic number is basically uh the number of protons so the number of protons went up nitrogen has seven protons but oxygen has eight but what about the number of neutrons the number of neutrons is the difference between the mass number and the atomic number so nitrogen has six neutrons and oxygen has five so the number of neutrons went down so let's understand what happened we lost a neutron we gained a proton and nitrogen also lost an electron so basically a neutron in nitrogen was converted into a proton and electron that's basically what happened a neutron in the nitrogen nucleus was converted to a proton the proton stayed in a nucleus but the electron left and so that's why we could see we have a decrease in a neutron number an increase in a proton number and electron it escaped from the atom or from the nucleus of the atom now the next kind of reaction that we're going to talk about is positron production so we're going to produce a patron in this reaction so if we're producing it it's going to be on the right side so this time it's going to be 0 positive 1 and let's use the beta symbol now what's the missing element now the mass is going to be the same it's going to be 13 but now the atomic number is going to be 7 minus one which is six so what's the missing element here what element has an atomic number of six this is no other than carbon so what is the effect of positron production so this time the atomic number went down it decreased from 7 to six so whenever the atomic number goes down we said the number of protons decreases but what happened to the neutron number well 13 - 7 is 6 so nitrogen had six six neutrons 13 - 6 is 7 so now it has seven neutrons so the neutron number went up so basically a proton was converted into a neutron and a positron so let's rewrite it a different way so here's the proton with a mass of one and a charge of one it was converted into a neutron which had a mass of one and a charge of Z and it was converted also into a positron which has a mass of zero and a charge of one so a positron is just an anti-particle of the electron you can see how it's balanced 1 + 0 is 1 and 0 + 1 is 1 so that's what happened uh during positron production a proton was converted into a neutron and a positron by the way what happens when a positron meets with an electron when these two get together they cancel out and they form a gamma particle so as you can see 1 +1 um is zero so they basically annihilate each other emitting gamma radiation the next type of Decay we're going to talk about is electron capture so what exactly is an electron capture well sometimes the nucleus of an atom can capture one of its uh inner core electrons and so let's see what happens let's say if we have a arsenic 73 arsenic has an atomic number of 33 and if the nucleus captures an electron the electron has to be on the left side so what element will be produced 73 + 0 well that's going to stay 73 33 +1 is 32 so arsenic is going to change into germanium if the nucleus of the Arsenic atom captures an inner core electron so let's see what happens within a nucleus so the atomic number went down it went from 33 to 32 so we lost the proton the proton number went down now the number of neutrons is the mass number minus the atomic number so 73 - 33 arsenic has 40 neutrons and 73 - 32 geranium has 41 neutrons so we gained a neutron by acquiring an electron so let's see what happened here so in a nucleus a proton which has a mass of one and a charge of one combined with an electron to create a neutron 1 + 0 is 1 and 1 + 1 is 0 so that's what happens during electron capture the proton and the electron they come together they form a neutron and the element changes the atomic number decreases by one and now the last thing we're going to talk about is alpha particle production so let's say if we have element P which has an atomic number of 84 and since we're producing alpha particles we need to put it on the right side so what's the missing element so 210 - 4 is uh 206 and 84 - 2 is 82 so the element with the atomic number of 82 that is PB that's lead and so this is half a particle production and basically you just got to make sure the reaction is balanced as long as the masses and the atomic numbers or the charges are the same on both sides of the equation then you're good that's it so that's just an intro into nuclear chemistry and different types of uh radioactive decay so that is it for this video thanks for watching and have a great day