Can You Explain The Use Of Radiation In Medical Treatment And Archaeological Dating?

Radioactive materials have many uses in medical treatment and archaeological dating. Although other uses also exist but in this question we have limited the scope only to these two.

Mostly in radioactive medical treatment, radioactive cobalt 60(Co-60) is used. It decays with emissions of beta particles and high energy gamma rays. When properly shielded, the gamma rays can be brought to bear on deep cancerous growths in a cancer patient. The radiation kills the cells of the malignant tumor.

Gammatrons are machines that are built for this purpose and are very useful in radiotherapy.

Radioactive carbon-14 is present in the atmosphere which is absorbed by plants when they absorb car bon dioxide. When a tree dies, the radioactive carbon present inside it begins to decays. The half life of carbon is known to be 5500 years. The age of the dead tree can be found by comparing the activity of carbon – 14 in the dead tree with a living one.

Since the carbon -14 in the dead tree is not replenished as compared to that in a living tree, therefore by measuring the activity of the carbon- 14 in an ancient historical object, the scientists can calculate the age of that thing fairly accurately.

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