Know the facts

  Radium Radium  is a chemical element with the symbol  Ra  and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) on exposure to air, forming a black surface layer of radium nitride (Ra 3 N 2 ). All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226, which has a half-life of 1600 years and decays into radon gas (specifically the isotope radon-222). When radium decays, ionizing radiation is a by-product, which can excite fluorescent chemicals and cause radioluminescence. Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 from ore mined at Jáchymov. They extracted the radium compou...

  Radioactivity Radioactive decay  (also known as  nuclear decay ,  radioactivity ,  radioactive disintegration  or  nuclear disintegration ) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is considered  radioactive . Three of the most common types of decay are  alpha decay  ( 𝛼-decay ),  beta decay  ( 𝛽-decay ), and  gamma decay  ( 𝛾-decay ), all of which involve emitting one or more particles. The weak force is the mechanism that is responsible for beta decay, while the other two are governed by the electromagnetic and strong forces. Radioactive decay is a stochastic (i.e. random) process at the level of single atoms. According to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay, regardless of how long the atom has existed. However, for a...

  Atom An  atom  is the smallest unit of ordinary  matter  that forms a  chemical element . Every  solid ,  liquid ,  gas , and  plasma  is composed of neutral or  ionized  atoms. Atoms are extremely small, typically around 100  picometers  across. They are so small that accurately predicting their behavior using  classical physics —as if they were  tennis balls , for example—is not possible due to  quantum effects . Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. More than 99.94% of an atom's mass is in the nucleus. The protons have a positive electric charge, the electrons have a negative electric charge, and the neutrons have no electric charge. If the number of protons...

Christmas   Christmas  is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast and initiates the season of Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many countries, is celebrated religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the holiday season organized around it. The traditional Christmas narrative, the Nativity of Jesus, delineated in the New Testament says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in accordance with messianic prop...

AMUL  Q. Amul company business is low why?      → . Cost of Operations –  Amul's operation is huge . And so is the cost. Plus the sector is such that maintaining margins becomes difficult day by day. Thus, to face international players, Amul needs to maintain the operations in the same manner it is carrying out today. In March, Amul rolled out a campaign  to fight disinformation against milk . So they had advertisements that busted myths of plant-based beverages, etc. They also claimed that milk was a complete food, full of nutrients and vegetarian. Why is PETA against Amul? Amul vs PETA The non-profit organisation  asked Amul to benefit from the booming vegan food and milk market . ... Maintaining that PETA's demand is a part of the misinformation campaign, Humbal added that it is an attempt to break the Indian dairy industry, saving the country from importing milk and milk products.

In Quantum Physics, Everything Is Relative The conceptual breakthrough initiated by Heisenberg (who was mentored by Niels Bohr), and firmed up with contributions from Max Born, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger and others, makes it clear that the world of the very small — that of photons, electrons, atoms and molecules — obeys rules that go against the grain of our everyday physical reality. Take an electron that is emitted at Point A and is detected at Point B. One would assume that the electron follows a trajectory, the way a baseball does from a pitcher’s hand to a catcher’s mitt. To explain experimental observations, Heisenberg rejected the notion of a trajectory for the electron. The resulting quantum theory deals in probabilities. It lets you calculate the probability of finding the electron at Point B. It says nothing of the path the electron takes. In its most austere form, quantum theory even denies any reality to the electron until it is detected (leading some to ...

  Quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics  is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science. Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale. Quantum mechanics differs from classical physics in that energy, momentum, angular momentum, and other quantities of a bound system are restricted to discrete values (q...