Penetration of average-energy protons

[YourEverydayWaffle]

Hey all. Just curious, what is the penetration of a proton of average energy levels? Material doesn't matter, I've just been unable to find how well it penetrates through materials. If being specific is possible, is it more or less than neutron radiation?

[*Aqua*]

Wikipedia has some related articles about that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopping_power_(particle_radiation)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bragg_peak

Especially the last article has a diagram which should help you:

[-Velocity-]

Hey all. Just curious, what is the penetration of a proton of average energy levels? Material doesn't matter, I've just been unable to find how well it penetrates through materials. If being specific is possible, is it more or less than neutron radiation?

As it is electrically charged, it won't penetrate very far. Neutrons are dangerous because they do not interact via the electromagnetic force and thus and sail right through the outer atoms of your body, delivering ionizing radiation deep inside your body when they finally strike a nucleus and interact via the strong force. In contrast, alpha radiation, which is helium-4 nuclei, generally only burns your skin since alpha particles are electrically charged, and so they feel electrostatic forces from both the electron cloud and nucleus. (The wide separation between electron cloud and nucleus means that the range at which electrostatic forces are cancelled is much, MUCH larger than the range at which the strong force is cancelled- the effects of the strong force is just confined to the nucleus and a very small radius around it, while the electromagnetic force is not largely cancelled until a few atomic radii.)

Since a proton has twice the charge per mass as helium-4 does, I would expect protons to penetrate even less distance into solid matter than alpha particles.

Edited January 12, 2015 by |Velocity|