What are transmutation reactions?

Question

What are transmutation reactions?

Answer 1

Transmutation means that the components involved in the reaction must change.  These occur in nuclear reactions where an element is changed into a different element.

An example of this:

(197)Au + n > (198)Au > (198)Hg

Where gold is bombarded by neutrons, takes on in, raises its number of particles and then proceeds to become mercury.  This can continue with proper resources.

Hope this helped!

Answer 2

Transmutation in regard to normal chemical reactions doesn't mean anything, it refers only to elemental, or nuclear, transmutation.  So it's one element being transformed into another.  This is the stuff that the old alchemists were searching for, but didn't have the tools to do or to know if they did it!    Any nuclear reaction that converts one element to another is one of these.

In reactors, neutron capture is a big reaction, but it causes one element to become an isotope of itself, such as carbon-12 capturing a neutron to become carbon-13.  It's still carbon.  But the neutrons can cause other particles to leave, or the products undergo radioactive decay (beta decay) to produce other elements or they can cause fission to produce a transmutation reaction.

In a particle accelerator you have high energy protons, deuterons, helium-3, helium-4 etc. particles at high energy slamming into nuclei and causing nuclear reactions.    Ga-68 (p,n) [that's proton hits, goes in, knocks out a neutron]  to form Ge-68, and lots, lots more.  It's actually possible to convert lead to gold with (p,alpha) reactions and neutron capture.. but the gold would be really, really expensive.

Answer 3

this ls jist a reaction involving more than  three reactants