this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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Sure, but just because it's chock full of Hydrogen, which happens to be about the same mass as a neutron and thus takes up a lot of its energy per collision. Plastic, being a hydrocarbon, does the same thing.
That being said, water is pretty cool. You could use 2 inches of lead to stop 90% of gamma radiation, or 2 feet of water for the same effect. On top of that, metal is terrible at slowing neutrons (due to metal not being hydrogen), but that same 2 feet of water will slow down the neutrons by about 99.5%.
It is because of the hydrogen, but it's not really to do with the mass, but rather because a "collision"/interaction is much more likely. For instance, ^58^Ni has the same likelihood to interact as hydrogen, while deuterium has only a fifth. ^135^Xe meanwhile has some millions of times the absorption power of hydrogen and it's quite a lot heavier. It's just not very practical as an absorber.
Hydrogen's cool man. It's just like, one little proton out there in the universe, with his Jiminy Cricket Electron buddy circling around all times, making sure he stays balanced. An unfathomable number of them, more than anything else. All exactly the same yet repelled by each other, like speed dating at comic-con.