Using Nuclear Material

Half-Life

is the required for of a radioisotopes nuclei to decay into its products. For any # ofradioisotope, lives % Remaining
0 1 2 100% 50% 25%

3 4 5 6

12.5% 6.25% 3.125% 1.5625%

Half-Life
Half-Life
100 90

80
70

% Remaining

60 50

40
30 20 10 0

# of Half-Lives

Half-Life

For example, suppose you have 10.0 grams of strontium 90, which has a half life of 29 years. How much will be remaining after x number of years? # of lives Time (Years) Amount Remaining You can use a table: (g)

0 1 2 3 4

0 29 58 87 116

10 5 2.5 1.25 0.625

Half-Life

Or an equation!

Half-Life

Example 1: If gallium 68 has a half-life of 68.3 minutes, how much of a 160.0 mg sample is left after 1 half life? 2 half lives? 3 half lives?
mt = m0* (.5)n

mt = 160mg * (.5)1 mt = 160mg * (.5)2 mt = 160mg * (.5)3

mt = 80mg

mt = 40mg

mt = 20mg

Half-Life

Example 2: Cobalt 60, with a half-life of 5 years, is used in cancer radiation treatments. If a hospital purchases a supply of 30.0 g, how much would be left after 15 years?
n = total time/half-life n = 15/5 = 3

mt = m0* (.5)n mt = 30g * (.5)3 mt = 3.75g

Half-Life

Example 3: The half-life of polonium-218 is 3.0 minutes. If you start with 20.0 g, how long will it take before only 1.25 g remains?
mt = m0* (.5)n 1.25 = 20g * (.5)n 0.0625 = (.5)n ln(0.0625) = ln((.5)n) ln(0.0625) = n*ln(.5) 4= n 4*3mins =12 mins

Half-Life

Example 4: A sample initially contains 150.0 mg of radon-222. After 11.4 days, the sample contains 22.75 mg of radon-222. Calculate the half-life. mt = m0* (.5)n n = total time/half-life 22.75 = 150g * (.5)n 2.72 = 11.4/half-life half-life = 11.4/2.72 0.152 = (.5)n half-life = 4.19 days ln(0.152) = ln((.5)n) ln(0.152) = n*ln(.5) 2.72= n

Uses of Radiation

Medical applications
Radiation

of cancer cells Radioactive tracers to detect disease Sterilization of equipment

Commercial products (smoke alarms) Radioactive dating

Radiation therapy

High doses of radiation can causes the normal functioning of living cells to mutate and leads to abnormal growth and eventually cancer. VERY HIGH doses will kill cells especially fastgrowing ones like cancer cells

Gamma ray treatment

Radioactive Tracers in Diagnosis

Used to follow the flow of a substance through the body. Pattern of colors/locations can tell doctors how well particular organs are functioning. Technetium-99 is one of the most common used extensively in imaging Iodine-131 for thyroid function Thalium-201 for cardiac problems Flourine-18 for PET scans

Sterilisation

Sterilisation - Killing microorganisms on medical instruments using a strongly ionising source of radiation. Used on medical instruments while they are still within their packaging. Food can also be irradiated to increase shelf-life.

Sterile syringe within its packaging

Commercial products: Smoke detectors

A radioactive source inside the alarm ionises an air gap so that it conducts electricity americium-241, an alpha emitter

Very long half-life

In a fire, smoke prevents the radiation and therefore a drop in electric current which sets off the alarm.

Radioactive Dating

Radiocarbon dating: the ages of specimens of organic origin can be estimated by measuring the amount of cabon-14 in a sample.

Radiocarbon dating
Living material (for example a plant) contains a known tiny proportion of radioactive carbon-14. This isotope is produced when high speed neutrons (part of cosmic radiation) collide with nitrogen gas in our atmosphere.

14 7

N +

1
0

14 6

C +

1
1

When organisms die, they no longer have a constant proportion of carbon-14. It decays by beta emission back to the stable nitrogen-14 with a half-life of about 5600 years. 14 14

-1

Calculating ages

mt = m0* (.5)n 0.636 = 1 * (.5)n 0.636 = (.5)n ln(0.636) = ln((.5)n) ln(0.636) = n*ln(.5) 0.65= n

Example: A piece of wood taken from a cave dwelling in New Mexico is found to have a carbon-14 activity (per gram of carbon) only 0.636 times that of wood today. Estimate the age of the wood. (The half-life of carbon14 is 5730 years.)

0.65*5730 = 3741.1 yrs

Limitations of radiocarbon dating

The dating process assumes that the level of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth is constant corrected by using known ages of objects, esp trees (tree rings) Radiocarbon dating is limited to reasonably young samples no older than ~50,000 years because the amount of carbon-14 becomes to small to measure accurately Rocks and other very old objects are dated using isotopes with significantly longer half-lives.
Potassium-40 decays to argon-40: half-life = 1.25 billion years Uranium-238 decays to lead-206: half-life = 4.47 billion years