In beta negative decay, a neutron is converted into a proton and an electron. The nuclear charge increases by 1 (due to increase in protons), while the electron (beta particle) is removed. The number of orbiting electrons remains the same. How is the resulting atom neutral?

Dear student,

Beta Decay

A phenomenon of emission of an electron from a radioactive nucleus.

Experiments show that energy of emitted electron varies continuously from zero to maximum value, which was contrary to a-decay, whose energy was fixed. To account for this Wolf Gang Pauli postulated the existence of an uncharged particle antineutrino, along with b-particle and the whole energy Q is shared by b-particle and antineutrino. This explained why the energy of the electron was not fixed.

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