Klyvning kol-14

När en kol-14-atom  sönderfaller till en kväveatom så är det ett beta-sönderfall.

Från engelska Wikipedia:

By emitting an electron and an electron antineutrino, one of the neutrons in the carbon-14 atom decays to a proton and the carbon-14 (half-life of 5,730 ± 40 years) decays into the stable (non-radioactive) isotope nitrogen-14.

As usual with beta decay, almost all the decay energy is carried away by the beta particle and the neutrino. The emitted beta particles have a maximum energy of about 156 keV, while their weighted mean energy is 49 keV. These are relatively low energies; the maximum distance traveled is estimated to be 22 cm in air and 0.27 mm in body tissue. The fraction of the radiation transmitted through the dead skin layer is estimated to be 0.11. Small amounts of carbon-14 are not easily detected by typical Geiger–Müller (G-M) detectors; it is estimated that G-M detectors will not normally detect contamination of less than about 100,000 disintegrations per minute (0.05 µCi). Liquid scintillation counting is the preferred method. The G-M counting efficiency is estimated to be 3%. The half-distance layer in water is 0.05 mm.

abbee11 skrev:

hur omvandlas en neutron till en proton. Och är detta endast vid beta-strålningen? boken säger inte så mycket

Det sker genom den svaga växelverkan. Det är helt rätt att gymnasieböcker inte säger mycket om sådant.