You are training for an upcoming Physics Olympics competition. Your coach gives you the following problem and a short time interval to solve it: For radioisotopes with very long half-lives, we cannot measure the half-life in the laboratory, because the activity does not change enough in a reasonable time interval to generate a graph like in the figure below. N(O) Nor No N=Noe- +- The time interval T₁/2 is the half-life of the sample. TV/2 271/2 0 But suppose you have been given a sample of pure 115In that has been gathered from meteoroids. The sample has a mass of 94.1 g and has a measured activity of 24.5 Bq. Quick! Determine an estimate of the half-life of 1151n (in years). Your future as a Physics Olympic team member depends on your answer! yr
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion is a type of nuclear reaction. In nuclear fusion, two or more than two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus. During this process, an enormous amount of energy is released. This energy is called nuclear energy. Nuclear fusion is the energy source of the sun and stars.
Fusion Bomb
A fusion bomb is also known as a thermonuclear bomb or hydrogen bomb which releases a large amount of explosive energy during a nuclear chain reaction when the lighter nuclei in it, combine to form heavier nuclei, and a large amount of radiation is released. It is an uncontrolled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction where isotopes of hydrogen combine under very high temperature to form helium. They work on the principle of operation of atomic fusion. The isotopes of Hydrogen are deuterium and tritium, where they combine their masses and have greater mass than the product nuclei, get heated at high temperatures, and releases energy.
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