Ionizing radiation

Vargovschi Dan
Mihai
Group 3
What are ionizing radiation?
 Ionizing radiation
represents radiations that
have energy over 10
electron-volts.
 This radiations can be
electromagnetic or
corpuscular.
 From the electromagnetic
radiations,only the Gama
and X have the energy to be
consider ionizing.
Proces of ionization
 The process by which a neutral
atom or molecule becomes
positively charged is called
ionization, and the resulting
entity is called a positive ion.
The ejected electron can in turn
ionize other atoms or molecules.
For this reason, alpha, beta, and
y radiation , X and n are also
called ionizing radiation.
What happens when an atom is
ionized?
 An atom in its neutral state has the number of protons in the nucleus equal
to the number electrons in the electron shell.
 An atom becomes ionized if it yields or receives electrons.
 1. If the atom receives an electron, the atom becomes negative.
 2 If the atom yields an electron , that atom becomes positive.
 Depending on the energy transported, the radiation can
be:

Non-ionizing radiation: radio, TV, microwave, infrared, light,

ultraviolet waves;
Ionizing radiation: particles or electromagnetic waves with a
wavelength of up to 100 nanometers capable of producing ions,
directly or indirectly - X-rays, gamma, cosmic radiation.
How radiations acctualy work?
 The energy of a
radiation is given to
the electrons of an
atom, this
elementary act of
energy transfer can
be repeated a large
number of times by
the same radiation.
 Radiotherapy
Radiotherapy techniques are:
External irradiation
Brachytherapy or curietherapy
(placement of radioactive sources in
tumor tissue).
Metabolic radiotherapy (with isotopes).
Tumors respond to irradiation by
progressively reducing their volume,
which depending on the dose may be
more or less complete.
Side effects can be acute (occur during
irradiation) or late (occur 6 months
after the end of radiation therapy).
Gama-ray
 Gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation from the radioactive decay of atomic nucle. It
consists in very high energy photons.
 Interactions with the environment of these radiations:
 When passing through absorbent environment, gamma radiation undergoes attenuation due to
the scattering and absorption processes according to the law of scattering and absorption.
X-rays
 X-rays interact with matter in three
main ways, through photoabsorption,
Compton scattering, and Rayleigh
scattering.
 Compton scattering: Some of the
photon's energy is transferred to the
scattering electron, ionizing the atom
and increasing the X-ray wavelength.
The scattered photon can go in any
direction, but it usually chooses to go
in the original direction it was
placed. , especially for high energy
X-rays.
Photoelectric absorption: A photosorbed photon transfers all energy to
the electron with which it interacts, it will ionizing the atom to which the
electron was attached and producing a photoelectron that is likely to
ionize several atoms in its path.
Thank you for the attention!