Madame Curie filled glass vials with pure radon, produced by her radium, for use in hospitals. Radon has a short half-life of 3.8 days. Suppose that she put 1 MBq of radon in a vial. i) Sketch a graph of the activity of the radon over the next week or two. Label the axes with appropriate numbers and units. Mark on the graph the half-life and the characteristic time. ii) Radon decays through a chain of four very short-lived radionuclides (halflives of 20 minutes and less) before reaching a relatively stable isotope of lead. Approximately what activity will the vial have two or three hours after filling, and about two weeks after filling?
Madame Curie filled glass vials with pure radon, produced by her radium, for use in hospitals. Radon has a short half-life of 3.8 days. Suppose that she put 1 MBq of radon in a vial. i) Sketch a graph of the activity of the radon over the next week or two. Label the axes with appropriate numbers and units. Mark on the graph the half-life and the characteristic time. ii) Radon decays through a chain of four very short-lived radionuclides (halflives of 20 minutes and less) before reaching a relatively stable isotope of lead. Approximately what activity will the vial have two or three hours after filling, and about two weeks after filling?
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Madame Curie filled glass vials with pure radon, produced by her radium, for use in hospitals. Radon has a short half-life of 3.8 days. Suppose that she put 1 MBq of radon in a vial.
i) Sketch a graph of the activity of the radon over the next week or two. Label the axes with appropriate numbers and units. Mark on the graph the half-life and the characteristic time.
ii) Radon decays through a chain of four very short-lived radionuclides (halflives of 20 minutes and less) before reaching a relatively stable isotope of lead. Approximately what activity will the vial have two or three hours after filling, and about two weeks after filling?
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