Beta particle

The higher the ionising effect, the greater the damage to living tissue, but also the lower the penetrating power of the radiation through matter.

Both of these processes contribute to the copious quantities of beta rays and electron antineutrinos produced by fission-reactor fuel rods.

The diagram shows the type and energy of the emitted radiation, its relative abundance, and the daughter nuclides after decay.

When passing through matter, a beta particle is decelerated by electromagnetic interactions and may give off bremsstrahlung X-rays.

Beta particles are also used in quality control to test the thickness of an item, such as paper, coming through a system of rollers.

A computer program monitoring the quality of the manufactured paper will then move the rollers to change the thickness of the final product.

Henri Becquerel, while experimenting with fluorescence, accidentally found out that uranium exposed a photographic plate, wrapped with black paper, with some unknown radiation that could not be turned off like X-rays.

[6] In 1900, Becquerel measured the mass-to-charge ratio (m/e) for beta particles by the method of J. J. Thomson used to study cathode rays and identify the electron.

Beta particles are moderately penetrating in living tissue, and can cause spontaneous mutation in DNA.

Alpha radiation consists of helium nuclei and is readily stopped by a sheet of paper. Beta radiation , consisting of electrons or positrons , is stopped by a thin aluminum plate, but gamma radiation requires shielding by dense material such as lead or concrete. [ 1 ]
Beta decay. A beta particle (in this case a negative electron) is shown being emitted by a nucleus . An antineutrino (not shown) is always emitted along with an electron. Insert: in the decay of a free neutron, a proton, an electron (negative beta ray), and an electron antineutrino are produced.
Caesium-137 decay scheme, showing it initially undergoes beta decay. The 661 keV gamma peak associated with 137 Cs is actually emitted by the daughter radionuclide.
Blue Cherenkov radiation light being emitted from a TRIGA reactor pool is due to high-speed beta particles traveling faster than the speed of light ( phase velocity ) in water (which is 75% of the speed of light in vacuum).
Beta radiation detected in an isopropanol cloud chamber (after insertion of an artificial source strontium-90 )