After alpha particle emission, do detectors on opposite sides of the atom detect the same particle?
352876
No, you might be thinking of gamma rays.  Several things can be done using gamma ray coincidence, but only one alpha particle is emitted in alpha decay.
435134
So, I don't think we have the technology to actually know if two atoms are identical.  Right now, we just think they are based on various observations.  It could turn out that each atom is actually a mini solar system like you suggested or it could turn out to be just identical atoms.  Science is just a series of guesses based on our current observations.  It changes all the time.
220685
They are alike in that they are all high energy emissions fron the sun. All are dangerous if you are exposed to them.\n\nThey are different in that gamma rays are high energy photons with zero rest mass, and alpha & beta particles are actual particles with non-zero rest mass. Alpha particles are helium4 nuclei with no electrons attached. Beta particles are high energy electrons emitted from a nucleus as it decays.
322877
Rutherford's Discovery of Alpha Scattering\nI. The French Start First\n\nIn 1900, the Curies and Becquerel were studying radioactivity (Rutherford was in Canada, having just recently moved to McGill University in Montreal. He will return to England, but not for several years.) and they had occasion to determine if the alpha rays traveled in a straight line. Becquerel carried out the work.\n\nHe took some polonium (discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie) and made it into a straight line source, not the usual pencil of rays. He then used this long, narrow beam of alpha rays to make a photograph of a wire. He found that the shadows had sharp edges, even when the alpha rays had gone through a thin film of aluminum.\n\nMarie Curie gave the interpretation of the experiment. She said that this showed that the alpha particles were not scattered, that is, able to be bent from their path. Alpha rays traveled in nice, straight lines ALL THE TIME.\n\nThey were wrong.\n\nWe jump to 1903 and Rutherford announces he has succeeded in bending alpha particles with a magnetic (and an electrical) field. Becquerel, using his different techniques, checks and confirms Rutherford's results.\n\nWhat Becquerel does is aim his radioactive source (radium, now as well as polonium) at a narrow slit with a photographic plate on the other side. Of course, with no magnetic field, he gets a nice, crisp image of the narrow slit, directly in line with the radium source.\n\nWhen he turned on the magnetic field, he got Rutherford's result, that is, the alpha particles bent in the magnetic field.\n\nPart b of the figure shows the offset of the image on the photographic plate. It is not lined up directly with the open slit, labeled Y.\n\nBecquerel also reversed the magentic field's direction during the exposure and got a double image.\n\nThe images were exactly the same distance from the center and the edges of the traces ALWAYS were sharp and crisp.\n\nUp to this point, there was zero evidence of alpha particle scattering.\n\nII. Now, the evidence starts to accumulate\n\nThe work described above was all done in the early part of 1903 and it was in June of 1903 that Becquerel made the first observation that led to alpha particle scattering.\n\nHe noticed, right at the end of his experiments, that the images from the doubled set (when he reversed the magnetic field during the experiment) moved closer together as he moved the photographic plate away from the slit (that is, increased the length b in the diagram above).\n\nIt seemed that the radius of curvature of the alpha particles path through the slit Y increased as b increased, thereby moving the two images closer together.\n\nNow, Becquerel knew this equation:\n\nRH = v (M/E)\n\nR = the radius of curvature, H = the magnetic field strength, v is the velocity, and E/M is the charge-to-mass ratio of the alpha particle. (I know, I know, this equation just came out of nowhere. You'll have to trust me on this one, since I don't know how to derive the equation either.)\n\nWhat Becquerel did is assume E is constant, so this left him with the unpleasant thought that either v or M had to increase. Since it is very had to visualize the alpha particle SPEEDING UP as it traveled from its source, Bequerel decided that M must increase, that the alpha particle picked up stray matter as it traveled along.\n\nHe could not have liked it, but there wasn't anything else he could think of. Since Rutherford was busy with other work, he did not take up any checking on Becquerel's results. However, one Rutherford result will have bearing on scattering. Rutherford found (in July 1905) that the alpha particle decreased in velocity, until at about 6,000 miles per second, it would not make its presence known by ionizing gases or darkening a photographic plate.\n\nIII. We're getting there\n\nThe importance of the slowing down of the alpha particle meant that R (the radius of the curvature in a magnetic field)
526456
No, it's evidence of combustion.  Radioactive decay is usually invisible unless you have film there to see the particles given off.
375887
I think what you're asking is why when a photon is detected at one location it can never be detected anywhere else even though it seems to be (and is) a wave rolling over many detectors simultaneously.\n\nFirst it's necessary to dispose of the canard that a photon is a particle in the classical sense, whose position is hidden or unknown until it transpires (becomes known) by means of a detection event. That's false even though standard terminology such as "detection", "measurement", "uncertainty" seem to support it. A photon is an elementary excitation of the electromagnetic field described by a wavefunction over space.\n\nThe photon initially can be described by a superposition of states:\n\n|s1> + |s2> +...\n\nwhere for example |s1> is a state in which the wavefunction is nonzero only near detector 1, in |s2> it's nonzero only near detector 2, and so on. Wherever the photon wavefunction overlaps the wavefunction of a charged particle there's an interaction. If the photon wavefunction overlaps an electron in detector 1 there is some evolution into a state in which the photon is absorbed (destroyed) and an electron is ejected from the atom triggering the detector, so the above state evolves into something like:\n\n|d1> + |d2> + ...\n\nwhere |d1> is a state in which detector 1 has registered an event, and so on.\n\nIn each state |di> there is no possibility that any detector other than i has registered an event since it evolved directly from |si> in which the photon wavefunction was nonzero only near detector i and zero everywhere else. So in each of the component states there is only the one detector which registered an event and no photon left around to trigger any more. Because the states |d1>,... are forever orthogonal to each other we can focus on just one and pretend the others don't exist. That's the idea behind the Copenhagen interpretation.\n\nTechnically a single photon cannot be detected without destroying it, but an electron can be. After the electron detection process the states |d1>,... etc. of the world would include various components of the original electron state in each one. Once two components of the electron state or wavefunction have become hooked or entangled with separate orthogonal states of the external world they can no longer interfere with each other.
934731
When an alpha particle is emitted, the atomic mass of an element goes down by roughly 4.0015 amu, due to the loss of 4 nucleons. The atomic number of the atom goes down by 2, as the atom loses 2 protons, becoming a new element\n\nwhen beta particle is emitted at. no changes by 1 \n\n\nwhen gamma is emitted no change takes place
664927
First, can a subatomic particle appear to be in two places at once?\n\nAccording to Quantum Theory, the answer is yes, because in order to know where a particle is, we have to measure its position, but the very act of measuring its position will alter the particle's behavior. So in effect we can never be sure where it is exactly. So in this sense, we may get measurements that give results that says the particle is here and there (this is the Uncertainty Principle).\n\nOf course, this is NOT new to quantum theory. So what's new? Someone mentioned "quantum entanglement" and "quantum teleportation". These are some of the new topics in quantum theory.\n\nPS - there is no such thing as Aether quantum dynamics or\n Auto dynamics, and Bohr's quantum mechanics is alive and well. The only addition we've added to Bohr's theory is the concept of electron cloud (i.e. a probability cloud) around the nucleus of an atom rather than electron orbits.
705042
No, radioactive decay is pseudo-random process. Even if you had two samples of the same material with the same mass, there is nothing to guarantee that the same number of particles would be ejected. If you decay time is small enough then statistically the two sample will yield similar results. \n\nIn your case if you assume the two samples are the same isotope, then you would expect the larger sample to emit twice as many particles as the smaller sample. The number of decays is proportional to the mass.
619512
This conversion is done daily at particle accelerators. The problem is that it is exceedingly difficult to produce much matter this way since anti-matter is always produced at the same time and because the energies needed are huge. So you will never seea hunk of matter that was produced this way, you can see the tracks of the particles that have been.
538049
Yes.  In fact protons even from two different elements are indistinguishable.  This is a fundamental property that is quite interesting, and it results in some very odd behavior.
469212
See if this helps.\n\nhttp://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atomic/hund.html
389400
Remember that those lobes are not real physical structure, but rather a plot of the probablity (really probability density) of the electron's spacial component of its wave function.  The electron actually occupies both lobes simultaniously, so it has no problem going from one lobe to the other, as it is already in both places.
21088
Anti-matter particles are particles that have the opposite charge of normal matter.  For example, a proton is a positively charged particle, it's opposite, a positron has the same properties but with a negative charge.  When a proton and positron come in contact, tremendous amounts of energy are released and the particles destroy each other.  \n\nIt is hoped that anti-matter reactors will be available some day.  However, anti-matter particles are very unstable and scientists have had little success in stabilizing them for more than a few nanoseconds before they cease to exist.
640543
When the number of atoms of each element are equal on both sides.
525644
Alpha particle is a helium nucleus, so He-4.\n\nAl-27 + He-4 ---->  H-1 + Si-30\n\nBalance the atomic number and the atomic mass on both sides and you should find that you've generated an atom of silicon-30.
305714
Yes, it does.  It is related to the average length shape of the electron cloud coprising the dipole.