An 10 g sample of a radioactive element takes 5432.6 years to reduce into 1 g. Calculate the half-life and identify the element.

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An 10 g sample of a radioactive element takes 5432.6 years to reduce into 1 g. Calculate
the half-life and identify the element.
Transcribed Image Text:An 10 g sample of a radioactive element takes 5432.6 years to reduce into 1 g. Calculate the half-life and identify the element.
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Step 1
  • Radioactive decay takes place when an unstable nucleus becomes stable. The instability arises due to a mismatch between the number of neutrons and protons. Only a few configurations of neutrons and protons are stable.

 

  • This decay will be exponential in nature and is given by,

N=N0e0.693(tt12)

Here N0 is the original number of radioactive nuclei present, t is the time, and t1/2 is the half-life of the radioactive sample. This is known as the exponential law of radioactive decay.

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