Radioactivity and Radiation ─ What They Are, What They Do, and How to Harness Them

This book lays the foundations for you to understand all that you always wanted to know about radioactivity. It begins by setting out essential information about the structure of matter, how radiation occurs and how it can be measured. It goes on to explore the substantial benefits of radioactivity through its many applications, and also the possible risks associated with its use.

The field of radioactivity is explained in layman’s terms, so that everybody who is interested can improve their understanding of issues such as nuclear power, radiation accidents, medical applications of radiation and radioactivity from the environment.

Everything is radioactive. There is natural radioactivity in the homes that we live in, the food that we eat and the air that we breath. For over 100 years, people have recognised the potential for radioactivity to help solve problems and improve our standard of living. This has led to the creation of radioactivity levels in some places that are much higher than naturally-occurring background levels. Such high levels of radiation can be harmful to people and the environment, so there is a clear need to manage this potential harm and to make the risk worth the benefits mankind can achieve from radioactive materials.

Claus Grupen got the Ph.D. at Kiel University 1970 with a thesis on 'Electromagnetic Interactions on Cosmic Ray Muons. He was a Visiting Fellow of the Royal Society of England 1971 at Durham University, England. He is a Full Professor at Siegen University since 1981. He had Visiting professorships at Tokyo University 1980 and 1985. He was Pail Associate at CERN in 1990, 1994, and 2000. He got the Special High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Society for the Discovery of the Gluon in 1979. He was awarded as member of the PLUTO Collaboration DESY, in 1995,?Senior Fellow of the Helmholtz Association for Astroparticle Physics 2015,?Radiation officer at Kiel University and Siegen University (since 1976).

Mark Rodgers got the M.Sci. degree at the Cambridge University in Physics in 2007. He was a Visiting Researcher at Siegen University (Particle Physics) in 2008. He got the Ph.D. at Durham University in 2012 with a thesis on 'Automation of One-Loop Corrections for Multi-particle Processes'. He is currently working as a software engineer in Leeds, U.K.