kind of pessimistic, but good. It's pretty deep
1. Alpha particles. The most common material for smoke detectors is americium. It decays by emitting alpha particles, which (as they are charged particles) continually move throughout the smoke detector, thus providing an internal ionized medium. Smoke particles which drift into the detector intercept the ions, de-ionizing the smoke detector and interfering with an electrical circuit which requires ionized, non-smoky air to work. Then the detector notices that the electrical circuit has been disrupted by smoke, and triggers an alarm. 2. Fission Controlled fission reactions are currently the source of energy for modern nuclear power plants. Fusion would be much more efficient but is currently impractical with today's technology; however, research at the Livermore Laboratories seems promising and is expected to soon create the world's first sustained fusion reaction which produces net energy. 3. half-life 4. Strong force. This is mediated by color-charged gluons; for more information, you should read about the Standard Model. 5. mass 6. electrons 7. half-life is what I expect the answer to such a question is, but really a more appropriate response would be decay chain. Radioactive waste poses a threat mostly not because it is radioactive by itself, but because when it decays, other chemicals are produced (which are often even more toxic and unstable than the waste). 8. enriched uranium (U-235) 9. nuclear fusion 10. energy 11. Much, much, much less. Many orders of magnitude less. 12. 226 In conventional nuclear chemical notation, the mass number (A) is noted in superscript to the immediate left of the atomic symbol.
