Children's Ideas about Radioactivity and Radiation: sources, mode of travel, uses and dangers

Abstract

The understanding of pupils between the ages of 11 and 16 about radioactivity and radiation has been studied using a closed‐form questionnaire with a large cohort of children, and interviews with a subset of this group. Factor analysis of the questionnaire responses was used to probe further the general thinking of the children. Relatively few pupils seemed aware of the natural, ‘background’ sources of radioactivity, but the majority of children of all ages thought that radioactivity came from nuclear power stations. It was not clear whether children see the latter as an occasional but major consequence of accidents, or as a regular permeation, an inevitable by‐product of the technology of nuclear power generation. A high percentage thought that radioactivity could kill or otherwise harm living organisms. Over half of the pupils questioned thought that radioactivity made the ‘greenhouse effect’ worse, and more than half thought that radioactivity damaged the ozone layer. Our previous research has shown that many children confuse these two major global environmental issues; here, we demonstrate that this confusion extends to the environmental impacts of radioactivity and radiation.