Changing atoms into isotopes http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034 QuidditchFan731 I would like to preface this by apologizing in advance for my dearth of Chemistry knowledge. Somewhere out there someone is going to read this and become very angry about what a stupid question this is, and I have no excuse. My story involves a mad scientist who for plot reasons wants to change all of the atoms of something into isotopes. Let's say she has a prejudice against iron and develops a ray gun that causes whatever she points it at (i.e., a rudimentary wooden house held together with iron nails, a decorative sword, etc.) to add one neutron to every iron atom in the object. Exactly what sort of physical changes can I expect once she's accomplished this? Will the nail or sword melt? Will it look more or less the same? Will it explode? What will happen? Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:37:44 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125666 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125666 Clixe First the definition of an isotope: atoms that are the same element - atoms that have the same number of protons and a different number of neutrons. It is therefore not possible to turn an 'atom' into an 'isotope' because every atom is already an isotope. What you probably mean is to change all atoms of for example iron into one particular isotope of iron, say with 28 neutrons (54 Fe), or perhaps to change every iron-atom present to the isotope that has just one neutron more - in wich case still multiple isotopes would be present. The characteristics of different isotopes are more or less the same. An isotope with a neutron more will weight a bit more, you can calculate how much by saying it has one neutron more per (#protons+#neutrons) it already had, so if you go from 54Fe to 55Fe you could calculate the weight of 26 protons and 28 neutrons (original weight) and calculate that 1 neutron is a certain part of it (haven't calculated it, let's say it's 1/56'th), then the object would be 1/56'th heavier. There are sometimes different characteristics like melting temperature that differs a few degrees but overall the characteristics don't change much. What you will have if you change your atoms to an unstable isotope, is radio-actif decay (I'm thinking about Beta decay, wich is when there are 'too much' neutrons, they turn into a proton , releasing an electron and an antineutrino, and thus turning the element into the element with one proton higher). Other forms of radio-actif decay are possible too, I guess. There may be mistakes in the above explenation, I don't have a chemistry book with me now, but overall it will be something like that. By the way, your villains have really original evil plans. The presently common villains may learn from it :) Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:25:40 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125825 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125825 onesecondglance I'm no physicist but: - if you are adding neutrons where are you getting them from? - if you are taking them away, where are you putting them? You could probably work these two ideas together. Also, you would need a very significant power source to be able to change the element. One other thing worth thinking about is how you would target specific elements. You gave the example of a wooden house - how would you target just the iron and not also affect the carbon in the wood, the various other metals in the electrical wiring, a human inside (bearing in mind we have iron in our red blood cells...) Again, there could be fun possibilities with this. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:43:57 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125874 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125874 The_Halla You can select for or against some isotopes within an atomic mixture, by taking advantage of different diffusion rates for different masses--heavier stuff moves more slowly. That's what "enriched uranium" is--uranium that has been incorporated into a gaseous molecule, centrifuged for a while so that the concentration of heavier but non-fissile 238U is reduced in the mix, and then reformed into elemental uranium. Our own metabolic processes do this as well, selecting for Nitrogen-15. (You can actually tell where an organism lies on the food chain by analyzing the ratio of 15N to 14N in its tissues!) Chemically, though, different isotopes function identically--unless they radioactively decay, in which case they turn into completely different elements. (Carbon 14 turns into Nitrogen 14 by splitting a neutron into a proton and an electron--the masses are the same but the atomic number changes). But if you're just glomming neutrons onto atoms, you won't really be doing anything meaningful unless you happen to produce especially unstable radioisotopes--of which iron has none. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:38:44 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1128489 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1128489 Clixe if you would have a lot of radiation or not depends on wether the isotope is unstable or not. You can know how unstable it is by looking up the halftime ("halfwaardetijd" in dutch, don't know the translation): the time it takes untill about half the atoms have undergone a decay. If this is really short (seconds, millionth of a second), you can expect the iron will be decayed quickly, if it is long (years, millions of years even), hardly any atom will be decaying. (be carefull though, the time it takes for all of the atoms to have decayed is not just the dubble of the half time. After 1 halftime, half the atoms have decayed. After 2 halftime: 3/4 of the atoms have decayed. After 3 halftime: 7/8 of the atoms have decayed; so always half of what's left) If you remove neutrons, so that you have 'too many' protons, there's a process for that too, protons turning into neutrons, releasing stuff, but I don't know what that process is. It isn't called beta decay. If you remove protons, the element would change, but whether or not beta decay is likely depends from isotope to isotope (how unstable are they?). You'd have to look up the halftime of some isotopes to know with wich ones you can expect radiation. You could also have alfa decay or other forms of radioactive mechanisms. But I seemed to have forgotten how they work and thus when they will happen. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:14:49 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1128755 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1128755 alkmin Maybe it's too late to comment, but you never know... I don't think anything changes if the iron atoms of a building or any other object are substituted by a different iron isotope, unless that new isotope is unstable. In that case, the unstable Iron isotopes would decay via beta decay (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_isotopes), i.e. they would emit an electron / positron which would be quickly absorbed by the air or some other material. On the other hand, in order to change those Iron atoms into different isotopes, you would need some sort of a neutron beam which (a) would not be able to distinguish between Iron and other atoms, and (b) would create much more trouble than the isotopes themselves. So what is the aim of your mad scientist? What is s/he trying to achieve? The only use of such an isotope substitution I can think of at the moment is to mess up with the dating of an object (in which case you would most likely want to change the carbon isotopes) Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:31:09 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1131336 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1131336 Notkieran An interesting variation would be to change a proton to a neutron or vice versa (and this happens naturally). You could convert Iron-56 to Cobalt-56, which is rather bad news. Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:00:07 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1140164 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1140164 QuidditchFan731 Thank you, this was very informative. Out of curiosity, if my character used the ray gun to force the iron to add enough neutrons to undergo the the beta decay you mentioned, would that cause a lot of radiation to be released within the surrounding area? And would that also happen if I simply had the gun remove a neutron, changing the iron into manganese? Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:25:24 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126240 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126240 Irukazab [quote=onesecondglance] I'm no physicist but: - if you are adding neutrons where are you getting them from? - if you are taking them away, where are you putting them? You could probably work these two ideas together. Also, you would need a very significant power source to be able to change the element. One other thing worth thinking about is how you would target specific elements. You gave the example of a wooden house - how would you target just the iron and not also affect the carbon in the wood, the various other metals in the electrical wiring, a human inside (bearing in mind we have iron in our red blood cells...) Again, there could be fun possibilities with this. [/quote] Electrons.... Taking a neutron you would have to split the atom, I think we can agree, you'll notice that. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:29:51 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125996 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1125996 onesecondglance That would be the sound of me invoking the "not a physicist" get out clause... :O) Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:53:58 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126095 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126095 QuidditchFan731 Sorry, I meant if the gun removed a *proton*, so that it changed into manganese. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:28:08 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126245 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1126245 Notkieran Clixe: The word you want in english is "half-life". Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:58:00 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1140157 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1140157 Clixe Ah yes, half-life. Logical word. Thanks :) Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:39:03 -0600 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1147246 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/50034?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1147246