In reply to thomas malloy's message of Wed, 14 Dec 2005 01:35:58 -0600: Hi Thomas, [snip] >>Because each different isotope produces decay particles with a >>different energy, those with the greatest energy will have the >>greatest radius. Those with less energy will have a smaller >>radius. This leads to a series of concentric shells. > >Thank you for your reply Robin. However I'm still wondering about >extracting information from the imprint of the energy on the rock. >Any suggestions about what areas I should read about? [snip]
Actually it's slightly more complicated than I implied. Some decays produce beta particles, and electrons tend to have more penetrating power than alphas of the same energy. To further complicate matters, beta decays produce betas with a whole range of energies, from nothing up to the maximum possible energy for the decay. The energetic particles will dislodge both electrons and whole atoms within the crystal lattice of the rock, leading to chemical changes that reveal themselves as discolorations. Sorry, I have no particular book in mind, but perhaps from this you can get an idea of the general area that you would need to study. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
