Neutrons are used to induce artificial radioactivity because they

gideonseantems

7 years ago

Artificial transmutation
During radioactivity, one element is converted into another. The conversion of one element into another is known as transmutation. Natural radioactivity leads to natural transmutation of elements. Transmutation may also be carried out artificially in case of non-radioactive elements. This is known as artificial transmutation. The first artificial transmutation was made by Rutherford in 1919. He bombarded nitrogen-14 with fast moving -particles to form oxygen-17. (He used the -particles emitted by 84Po214)


Thus,
The process of conversion of one element into another element by artificial means, i.e. by bombarding the nuclei with high velocity sub-atomic particles is called artificial transmutation.

The products of artificial transmutation may be stable or radioactive.
The sub-atomic particles used for nuclear transmutations are called projectiles.
However, when -particles were used as projectiles, the reaction was found to be very slow because of the repulsion between the positively charged -particles and the target nuclei. But this repulsion can be overcome by the use of particle accelerators which impart high energy to the projectiles. For example, cyclotron, linear accelerator, and synchrotron.
Later on, in 1932, Chadwick discovered a new projectile, neutron, by the bombardment of beryllium with alpha particles. With a low mass and neutral charge, the neutron is not repelled by the nucleus and is quite effective in bringing about artificial transmutation.