What are the different kinds of nuclear radiation?

There are three kinds of nuclear radiation that you need to know for GCSE physics, and each is considerably different from the others. Firstly, alpha radiation: this is when a chunk of the nucleus is emitted, made up two protons and two neutrons. The second form is beta radiation: this is when an electron is emitted from a nucleus after a neutron decays into a proton and the emitted electron. Finally, the third form is gamma radiation: this is when a nucleus that has extra energy sheds that energy by emitting it as a wave of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation.These three kinds of radiation have different characteristics, in particular regarding two properties: how much they can penetrate through things, and how much they can damage animal or plant cells. Alpha radiation is the least penetrating, due to its large size compared to the other two. Beta radiation is somewhat more penetrating and gamma radiation is the most penetrating by a long way. (I would provide real world examples of effective barriers in-lesson to highlight this). In the case of how much damage they can do, the direction is the other way: alpha radiation being so big, it also does the most damage, with beta radiation doing less and gamma radiation yet less still. This doesn't mean gamma radiation is less dangerous than beta or alpha radiation, however. For example, if the radiation source is outside your body, of the three only the gamma radiation would get to your organs, with beta radiation just harming your skin and alpha radiation not even getting through the top-most layer of dead cells in your skin!