Evaluation of Uses (GCSE Physics)
Evaluation of Uses
Evaluating the Uses of Nuclear Radiation
Evaluation of Medical Uses
- Radiotherapy can cause tissue damage. Doctors must be careful when giving radiotherapy to patients, since the gamma rays can kill normal tissue too. Therefore, they need to strike a balance between killing the cancer cells and not destroying too many normal cells.
- Tissue damage can lead to mutations. If the radiation damages the DNA within a cell, the cell can rapidly divide. This abnormal behaviour is called a mutation, where the cell now becomes cancerous.
- Gamma rays are good for exploration. Doctors are able to use gamma rays to explore internal organs due to their weak ionising power. The main benefit of these tracers is that they allow life threatening conditions to be diagnosed, whilst not ionising too much tissue.
Internal and External Radiation
Tumours can be treated using either internal (inside the body) or external (outside the body) radiation. The level of danger varies depending on the type of radiation used, summarised in the table You need to be able to compare below.
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