Talk:Radiation

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[edit] WikiProject Disambiguation

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[edit] Comparison

Compare this to taking one aspirin a day (which we may call background level); this has been proven to be harmless for most people, and actually has substantial medical benefits for many people. If one were to take one million aspirin a day, that person would die immediately.

What kind of comparison is that???

It is a pretty good comparison. What precisely is your objection? RK

[edit] EM radiation

Can we please fold in the information from electromagnetic radiation and particle radiation into this article? I think it makes more sense as one single article. -- Alex.tan 07:10, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

ur so lame, dude

[edit] radiation hormesis

I would like some clarification on this new paragraph: Other scientists would point out that life of 2 billion years ago was very different from what it is now; for instance, oxygen was deadly to most life at the time. And while certain rivers of the former Soviet Union contain shellfish that make a Geiger counter cringe yet appear otherwise healthy, that's hardly reason for human beings to, say, dose themselves daily with radium salts as was once fashionable, or use cesium-137 pellets as handwarmers.[1] They'd point out that they are not arguing by mere logic, but by empirical results, such as the Petkau effect, that demonstrate certain highly nonlinear biological responses to radiation. In any case, linear extrapolation is an assumption that must be tested the same as anything else in science; one would not predict, say, superfluidity by linear extrapolation from warmer temperatures.

Given the comment given in the summary line when this paragraph was added, and given its placement and grammar, it appears as if this paragraph is trying to rebut the idea of radation hormesis. Yet midway in the paragraph it ends up with precisely the same logic used by advocated of radiation hormesis. In fact, the article already stated the exact same thing: linear extrapolation is an assumption that must be tested the same as anything else in science. Thus, I am wondering if the author could clarify his meaning? RK 01:53, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] radioactivity

This page used to be more-or-less duplicated on radioactivity. I've rewritten that, but preserved the old content on Talk:radioactivity since that stuff has received different improvements than this. Ugh.

I'm also planning to do some significant rearrangement and restructuring of this page to separate its content from radioactivity and radioactive contamination. I'll try to leave the contentious parts untouched as I'm not interested in edit-warring with anyone. --Andrew 04:23, May 6, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Mess?

(William M. Connolley 17:01, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)) The beginning of this appears to be a bit of a mess (which I don't have time or brain to fix now: sorry). Anyway, radiation is apparently waves (electromag) or particles. And light can be either, by QM. This is the wrong distinction: all sorts of rad are waves or particles, depending on how you look at them. Some particles are equivalent to electromag (ie are light). But others (alpha rad, say) aren't.

A bit later we are told that ligh isn't ionising but surely this depends on the material concerned? What about photograpy (of the old fashioned sort).


This article is indeed a mess. The real distinction is this:
  1. Some people talk about "radiation" and mean "electromagnetic waves", of any energy. (Or photons, if you prefer).
  2. Some people talk about "radiation" and mean "Something that comes flying through space and ionizes molecules". This can be high-energy photons (UV and higher; not visible light), alpha or beta particles.
Of course, there are other things that might be called radiation: neutrons, which are neither photons nor ionizing but come flying out of nuclear reactors and convert nuclei into radioactive isotopes, or gravitational, neutrino, and miscellaneous other radiation.
The biggest problem with this article is that it wants to be about ionizing radiation only but doesn't just break down and say so.
I am inclined to make this article be essentially a disambiguation page, and move most of its contents to a page on ionizing radiation; there's already one for electromagnetic radiation, as well as fast neutrons and slow neutrons. --Andrew 06:25, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Moved to ionizing radiation

In view of the persistent problems with this page, its content was moved to ionizing radiation, which is what it was actually about. The page was then made into a disambiguation page discussing the different kinds of radiation. I expect there are more. --Andrew 07:06, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Addition Of Thermal Radiation

Thermal radiation should be added to the list, as it is one of the three methods of heat flow and thus just as immportant as the others listed. I might add it myself if no one else does.

(William M. Connolley 08:24, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)) Thermal radiation is just a case of electromagnetic radiation.

[edit] Neutron radiation

In an older version of this page, one of the kinds of radiation discussed was neutron radiation. Certainly it is a kind of particle radiation, but then so is all ionizing radiation. More to the point, it is difficult to find the pages on fast neutrons and slow neutrons by following the link to particle radiation. These are an important kind of radiation that people should be able to find. Unfortunately we do not have a tidy page on neutron radiation, regardless of velocity.

I admit I am a little biased: I think particle radiation is a rather silly notion in the first place, quantum mechanics being what it is. For what it's worth, the top Google hits are mostly clones of our article. The others use it roughly the same way we do, with some mention of neutrinos but none of neutrons. (I suppose neutron radiation has a maximum range, since neutrons have a finite half-life). --Andrew 15:57, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps I should elaborate: I don't think it makes sense for this page to try and neatly classify up the kinds of radiation into non-overlapping categories. I think this is essentially a disambiguation page, and its purpose is to point people to the article they actually wanted. So listing important subtypes here shouldn't be a problem unless this page begins to become unnecessarily huge. --Andrew 16:03, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Complexity

How complicated should this article be?

I ask because it had more information in it, which was taken out to simplify the page. In particular, it made the distinction between kinds of raditaion (electromagnetic, ionizing, gravitational) and processes producing radiation (thermal radiation, synchrotron radiation, etc). This seems like a valuable distinction to me.

(William M. Connolley 13:28, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)) Ah... that may have been the


It is important that this page have enough information that readers can figure out what kind of radiation they're looking for. So, for example, they should know what kind of particle makes up electromagnetic radiation,

(William M. Connolley 13:28, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)) Ah, but the problem is, how to say it? What sort of *particle* makes up electromag rad? Well none at all, when it isn't being a particle. Its then a wave field. But keeping on going through QM type stuff on a disambig page seems inappropriate.

and the relation between ionizing and electromagnetic radiation should be made clear. Gravitational radiation definitely needs some description.

OK, if you can describe it accurately but simply. But does it really need a description (see below)?

Is it appropriate to include things like synchrotron radiation here? I originally put it in, thinking that people might be looking for almost any use of the word "radiation". But if complexity of this page is an issue, they're not essential (although they should be described in the relevant pages - it's hard to find synchrotron radiation from electromagnetic radiation, for example).

I ask mostly because we seem to be making conflicting changes and I really don't want edit wars. --Andrew 21:58, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

(William M. Connolley 13:28, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)) Twas me that made some of these changes. I argue that this is a disambig page: it should have refs to as many things as are useful (which is why the neutron stuff went in, cos someone said they were hard to find otherwise) but *not* attempt to describe anything in detail. In particular, I deleted the text around gravitation radiation because I felt it was wrong, but couldn't think of anything (short) better. But does the idea need a description to be recognised?

[edit] Questions

  • what name is given to cultures for identification of roganisms, as well as the identification of senstivities fo the organism to antibiotics?

[edit] greek-radiation

[edit] Radioactive contamination

I'd like to retain an external link to this article, because scientifically illiterate readers can confuse the two, for instance by saying something like "The accident caused radiation to leak from the facility." --Smack (talk) 07:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Black body radiation

Should we include Black body radiation? It seems that given some of the others on the list it would not be out of place but I wonder if anyone woudl ever accidently link here when that is what they want. Dalf | Talk 04:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

We should definitly include black body radiation. We should combine the two articles into one. Notyouravgjoe | Talk 20:17, 21APR06

[edit] Particle versus Wave Radiation

...I am having a foggy-headed day, and so my attempt is probably a bit sloppy, but if someone could spiff up my attempt to explain the difference between "radiation", a-la DNA damaging particles emitted from decaying materials, and "radiation", simple waves which don't really effect things other than making them vibrate differently, it'd be a huge help to the article.

Much of the mythology about, say, mobile phones giving you ear cancer or microwave ovens making your food dangerous come from people not realizing that what we have is more or less two synonyms, very different things being called "radiation". No amount of time sitting in front of your TV can make you radioactive, the lattere is a whole different concept.

That is a vital piece of information for this article to deliver--Kaz 22:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In fiction

Shouldn't there be a little section titled "Radiation in Fiction", where it describes how radiation is often used in science fiction to create monsters? Sure it's ridiculous but it's so widespread that it should be discussed in this article. Ratso 05:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and writ one.  Andreas  (T) 14:24, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
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