So to review what we've talked about so far,

ionizing radiation is any emission of light or particles

with enough energy to eject an electron from an atom,
causing an iron to be created.
So let's now talk about what that means a little deeper.
In order to do so, we have to delve
into the structure of the atom, into the nucleus itself.
Now we start to get at the question, what is nuclear?
So first, let's look at the atom in terms of a chemical sense,
in a sense that you may have looked at it before.
You'll often talk about this one nucleus
in the center of the atom labeled as helium, hydrogen,
or one of the other elements and a few other electrons
swirling around that nucleus, which are the cause of chemical
reactions.
Now we need to look a little bit deeper
to the subatomic particles inside the nucleus.
Inside this nucleus, we can see that there
are two types of particles-- protons, which
we say have a charge of plus 1, and neutrons, which
have no electrical charge at all, as discovered
by James Chadwick.
These protons and neutrons have almost the same amount of mass.
And the protons have an equal and opposite charge
as the electrons, so that this atom would
be considered electrically neutral,
and we call it a neutral atom.
Let's now talk a bit about the notation
of how to describe this nucleus that we see.
In this case, we're looking at a helium atom.
And what makes it a helium atom is the fact
that it has two protons--
2 being the atomic number of helium, which you can find here
on the periodic table.
Any atom with two protons is helium,
just like any atom with three protons is lithium, and so on.
The number here in the upper left
refers to the total number of nucleons--
that's protons plus neutrons--
that reside within the nucleus.
It also gives you a rough estimate
of the mass of that atom in what's
called atomic mass units.
And finally, on the outside, you can
see the negatively charged lighter electrons
swirling around this nucleus.
If we want to turn this neutral atom into an ion,
say, with a bit of ionizing radiation,
we have to do something that either ejects an electron
or adds an electron to this current atom.
This will either increase or decrease its electric charge,
respectively.
And any net charged atom we refer to as an ion.
Let's also introduce one other word called an isotope.
An isotope means a certain type of atom
that has a different number of neutrons than normal.
So let's look first at helium 4, an atom with two protons--
which makes it helium--
4 total nucleotides, meaning two neutrons in total.
If we take away one of those neutrons
or we add an extra one on, we can form the isotopes helium 3
or helium 5.
We refer to the atom type by its name, the total mass--
or the number of nucleons-- by that number we said,
like helium 5.
And then, if it's also an ion--
because it could be both--
we would give it an electrical charge like plus 1, minus 2,
plus 3, whatever you want.
So it's important to note that an ion can also be an isotope.
You can have an ionized isotope, and that's totally a thing.
So what types of particles are actually energetic enough
to be considered ionizing radiation and create an ion?
We already mentioned that different wavelengths of light
that have energies of at least about 4 electron volts
from ultraviolet to X-rays to gamma rays
all have enough energy to eject an electron, as shown here.
You can also have heavier particles-- like,
electrons can eject other electrons.
Electrons can be ionizing radiation.
Same goes four protons.
Same goes for alpha particles.
Same goes for neutrons.
Same goes for calcium 48 nuclei.
Same goes for any other high energy nucleus or ion.
These could all be considered ionizing radiation.
Even the fission fragments, or the extra atoms leftover
after a nuclear fusion event, typically
have enough energy to be considered ionizing radiation
and can cause ionizations to take place.

Now, there's one last particle we haven't talked about--

a very elusive nearly massless particle
that travels near the speed of light that does
have enough energy to ionize--
which deserves a special mention because we only
discovered its mass back in 1998,
and for which the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics
was received by the researchers.
This is called the neutrino, in addition to
its anti-matter cousin, the anti-neutrino.
Emitted in a whole host of different processes, which
we'll describe later in this lecture,
and they're almost massless.
They are chargeless, so they don't interact very strongly
with matter.
Detecting them is awfully difficult.
Our Geiger counters-- not good enough.
You need a much bigger and a much more sensitive detector.
What's shown here is the Kamiokande neutrino detector.
It's a huge hollowed-out chamber underground
to block background radiation lined
with about 11,000 photo tubes, or very sensitive vacuum tubes,
that respond to tiny amounts of light.
And then, it's filled with water, the interaction medium.
As neutrinos pass through, maybe one in every--
a lot, huge number--
will interact with a molecule of water,
cause an ionization event, and emit a cone of blue light
that's detected in these photo tubes.
So anytime a circle or an ellipse of photo tubes lights
up, that usually refers to a neutrino detection event.
Now, these neutrinos are typically
emitted in mass in two different places--
supernovas, or exploding stars, and nuclear reactors.
On one hand, if you see a few neutrinos
come into your detector at one time,
that's a significant event.
You best point your telescopes to the opposite location
in the night sky to see which star is exploding.
There are also people using neutrinos
as a way to detect if someone turns
on a nuclear reactor anywhere in the world.
Now, while that research is ongoing,
it's based on the physics of ionizing radiation
traveling through the entire earth,
interacting with a body of water,
and producing an ion pair that makes some light that causes
these photo tubes to light up.
So pretty exciting stuff.
And it shows you that the field of nuclear
is evolving even to this day.