Radiation and Medicine

This guide, from triple science support, provides practical advice and guidance to enhance and enrich the teaching of the electromagnetic spectrum using the context of medical physics. Most students are engaged by the ideas that medicine brings to the curriculum so this guide can be used as a tool to raise aspirations through enthusiasm for real life applications of science. You might like to try some of the activities in this guide when delivering the following aspects of the GCSE curriculum.

Light and electromagnetic waves:

• Interactions of electromagnetic radiation with matter and their applications: give examples of some practical uses of electromagnetic waves, visible, X-ray and gamma-ray regions and describe how X-rays and gamma-rays can have hazardous effects, notably on human bodily tissues.
• Lenses: use ray diagrams to illustrate reflection, refraction and the similarities and differences between convex and concave lenses (qualitative only).
• Hazards and uses of radioactive emissions and of background radiation; explain why the hazards associated with radioactive material differ according to the half-life involved.
• Describe the different uses of nuclear radiations for exploration of internal organs, and for control or destruction of unwanted tissue.

Please note this resource was originally published in 2014, and therefore it may contain links or references which are no longer available.