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What makes radon radioactive?


What makes radon radioactive?

Or what makes any radioactive element or isotope radioactive?

The protons are all positive and so tend to repel each other. The guons hold them and the neutrons together. But eventually you get to a point when there are so many protons that the nucleus becomes unstable.

When the nucleus becomes unstable several things might happen. A neutron might give off a beta particle (high energy electron) and become a proton, increasing the atomic number by one. Or the nucleus might give off an alpha particle, which is a helium nucleus of two protons and two neutrons, decreasing the atomic number by two. Or the nucleus might give off a high energy gamma ray with no change in atomic mass or number.

Or there might be a combination of these three basic forms of radioactive decay.

But there are other forms of decay and even splitting, as in the fission of the U235 nucleus by a neutron to produce barium and krypton atoms.

Radioactive decay continues until a stable form of the nucleus is reached, often after billions of years of decay.

Admittedly this is a superficial answer. But to provide more details would require some college level nuclear physics material and I sort of doubt you want that here.

The instability of it's particles.

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