happen out how a atom accelerator will be used to make rarified isotope used for nuclear medicine .
Tc 99 m sounds like something in a speculative fifties science fiction picture show that would be injected into someone to give them psychical baron , or twelve hr , or both . This goes double when it ’s combined with the ominous phrase ‘ nuclear medicine . ’ Together they call to mind a pitiful holidaymaker being held down by a hulking orderly name Nurse Mugsy while a guy with salt and pepper hair’s-breadth and a science lab pelage brandishes a glowing syringe and talks about how the only way humans will survive the amount atomic wintertime is by spike out the water supplying with technetium 99 m. It may or may not be raining , depending on the sensibilities of the director .
The realness of nuclear medicine are n’t that much brighter . atomic number 43 99 m and nuclear medicine are not fun things to experience . The isotope is radioactive , and throw off x - rays from inside a person ’s body . ten - light beam go through flesh like it ’s not even there , so the Tc 99 m inside a somebody is mensurable from outside of the somebody ’s trunk . In medicine it is often added to a chemical substance that will seize itself to tumors or growths inside a mortal . That chemical attaches itself to the tumor , and technetium 99 m ’s x - rays allow doctor to see how big a neoplasm is without having to cut that somebody open . Being a human x - ray projector is much , much better .
severely , though , technetium is both massively useful and massively used . The problem is , x - rays are not thrown off because an element is design to stick around . They are thresh out as an mentally ill atom becomes more unchanging , and the isotope atomic number 43 99 m does n’t have a long shelf life . This intend that the has to be a direction of getting it . Nuclear reactors are able to produce it , but they are not the secure things around .
Canada , perhaps encourage by the fact that the Large Hadron Collider did not release out to be a doom equipment , has amount up with a plan to build a atom accelerator in society to make and reap technetium 99 m. The atom smasher will hurl a stream of electrons at a metal prey . Once at the target , the electrons will either swerve off grade , or block deadened in their tracks in the risible manner of Wyle E Coyote , after he has been fired at a wall in a Warner Brothers cartoon .
Either mode , the electron will produce high - energy photons through bremsstrahlung .
‘ Bremsstrahlung ’ comes to us good manners of the Germans , who are clean off their profits with schadenfreude and looking for other colonial words to popularize . It means ‘ braking zip . ’ When the electrons swerve off row or terminate at the target , they lose impulse , thus lose energy . Any hippie will say us that , like , energy goes on forever , man , and can never really be lose , and of course flower people are never wrong . To economise vim , some photons are create to make up for the energy lost by the electrons . The electrons whizzing by also mess with the electromagnetic theatre at the prey , make even more photon .
These photon form another beam which hits another target , this one made of wakeless elements . These elements break down , producing rare isotopes . Those isotopes , including technetium 99 grand are reap and used in nuclear medicine . Possibly also by a nurse list Mugsy . masses will call their kidskin anything these days .
Sources : About.com , NDT , Physics World , andTRIUMF .
Top image of facility for rarified isotope beams atat Michigan State .
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