3h45m45s24f No Control Over Decay - Nucleus is a Sanctuary - TR2016a
Channel: Thorium Remix
Date: 2017-05-13

http://ThoriumRemix.com/ Given enough time, this Radium-88 isotope will shed energy and change. This is how isotopes in the Earth itself emit radiation. The geiger counter detects their presence. A cloud chamber makes these rays visible to the naked eye. Each new vapor trail shows that another atom has thrown off a fragment from its nucleus. Each atom does this only once before becoming a different isotope. This activity appears to go on endlessly. That's because there's billions of atoms in that tiny sample.

Kirk Sorensen:
You can't turn decay on and off. If we can turn radioactive decay on and off we can do all kinds of things be we've never figured out how to do it, I don't think we ever will. Because we simply can't influence the state of the nucleus like that.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson:
Hit it with a hammer. Boil it in oil. Vaporize it. The nucleus of an atom is kind of sanctuary. Immune to the shocks and upheavals of its environment. The atoms of each unstable element decay to constant rate. 

Gordon McDowell:
These mouse traps represent atoms that are radioactive. Every once in a while, a mousetrap's spring breaks down and snaps shut. A tiny bit of mass is converted into energy, as an atom changes spontaneously into a lighter isotope.

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