M06 Artificial radioactivity

Aim: To give a schematic representation of the historic experiment performed by the Curies in 1934, which resulted in the discovery of the first artificial radioactive nuclide
  In 1934 Fréderic and Irène Joliot-Curie succeeded in making the first artificial radioactive nuclide. ( A nuclide is any nuclear species of given mass number, A, and atomic number, Z.) They achieved this by firing
-particles at aluminium foil. The nuclide produced was , which decays in a different manner to naturally occurring radioactive nuclides. When decays a positron is released. These are particles with the mass of an electron but with a positive charge. The half-life for P-30 is 2.5 minutes

This experiment was not only the first to confirm the existence of positrons, but also of neutrons, which had been proposed 2 years earlier by Chadwick.