Measurement of Two Distinct MeanLives in the Decay of Activated Silver

John McIntyre Grimau

University of Sydney
(Dated: April 27, 2015)
A sample of Ag was irradiated by neutrons from an AmBe source, and its decay activity was
monitored by a GeigerMuller counter. Analysis of the data by means of fitting a secondorder
exponential curve suggests the presence of two radioisotopes in the sample, with meanlives of
33.0 0.8 and 202 4 seconds. We tentatively identify these as 110 Ag (35.43 s)[1] and 108 Ag (206.19
s)[2] repectively, resulting from neutron capture by 109 Ag and 107 Ag, despite the fact that the
accepted mean-life for the former isotope lies outside the range of our statistical error by a factor
of 3. We justify this assumption by demonstrating that the curve produced by holding fixed the
meanlives and varying only the initial populations of each isotope is an equally good fit to our
data.

INTRODUCTION & THEORY will be X W T . Extrapolating the count rate from the
effective live time to the whole interval, we can account
Neutron activation for the average number of pulses that were missed, and
thus compute a corrected count X 0 for the interval T :
Naturally occurring silver is composed of two isotopes, XT
107
Ag and 109 Ag, each with roughly equal abundance X0 = (1)
T XW
(52% and 48% respectively)[3]. Under neutron bombard-
ment, shortlived Ag isotopes are produced, which sub- The dead time W can be calculated by various means.
sequently undergo decay to Cd: Perhaps the simplest is to record a high-activity source
=37 b t=35 s
and produce a histogram of the interval size between
107 108 108
Ag + n Ag Cd + e + e- pulses. The dead time will be visible as an abrupt cut
109 =86 b 110 t=206 s 110
Ag + n Ag Cd + e + e- off near zero; it is the interval size below which no pulses
can possibly be recorded.
where and t are the neutron capture cross
A somewhat more accurate method involves measure-
sections[4] of the stable isotopes, and the meanlives[1][2]
ment of the activity from two such sources, individually
of the unstable isotopes, respectively. The energetic elec-
(XL & XR ) and together (XLR ), plus the background
trons produced in these decays can be detected by appa-
activity (XB ), all over the same interval T . After cor-
ratus such as a GeigerMuller (GM) counter. As the two
recting for dead time and subtracting the background,
unstable isotopes have very different meanlives, the to-
the following relation should hold:
tal activity from an activated Ag sample will display a
0 0
composite or secondorder exponential decay curve. By (XLR XB ) = (XL0 XB
0 0
) + (XR 0
XB )
fitting a curve of this form to the decay data, the indi-
vidual meanlives of the isotopes can be determined. By way of eqn 1 and some tedious algebra, we obtain
Other products & decay paths are possible (most no- a formula for W :
tably metastable states of Ag, and decays to Pd), but AT  
their cross-sections are small and their half-lives are long W = 1 1C (2)
B
compared to the phenomena with which we are interested
here. where A = XL XR XLR XB
B = XL XR (XLR + XB ) XLR XB (XL + XR )
C = B/A2 ((XL + XR ) (XLR + XB ))
Detector dead time
This value was substituted back into eqn 1 and used to
correct the recorded counts below.
A GM counter operates by allowing incoming particles
to ionize a low-pressure gas. Ions are then collected by
a high-voltage anode & cathode and detected as a pulse APPARATUS
of current. During this collection time, called the dead
time of the detector, no new incoming particles will be
Slow neutrons were provided by an americium-
registered. The effective live time during an interval is
beryllium (AmBe) source, in which the following
therefore reduced by an amount proprtional to the num-
reactions[5] take place:
ber of particles detected.
Say we observe X pulses during total time T . If the 241
 239


Am Np +
dead time after each pulse is W , the effective live time + 9 Be 12
C + n (5.75 MeV)

FIG. 1. The experimental set-up.
The source itself was surrounded by a moderator, and
contained within a lead castle to shield the surroundings
from unwanted neutron exposure. The exact moderator
used was not given in [5], but it may have been paraffin
as in [6] or [7].
As illustrated in fig. 1, the sample to be irradiated
was dropped into the track atop the lead castle, and held
in place adjacent to the AmBe source by a stopper. A
hand-held stopwatch was used to time the period of ex-
posure. Capture of decay data by the PRA software was
begun just prior to the end of the irradiation period, at
which point the stopper was pulled out and the sample
dropped to the GM counter below.
For calculation of detector dead time, a twin 14 C source
was used, consisting of a plastic holder in which two
samples of 14 C labelled L and R could be in- any given period, is X[8]. We have used this prop-
dependently inserted or removed. To measure the activ-
ity, the stopper was pulled out and the 14 C source was
simply dropped straight down the track with no irradia-
tion period. Care was taken to vary only the presence/
absence of the individual L & R sources between mea-
surements, and hold other factors constant; the plastic
holder was always inserted facing the GM counter, and
the background activity was measured with the holder
empty.
The GM counters output was connected to the sound
card of a laboratory computer, and signals were captured
using Marek Dolleisers Pulse Recorder and Analyser
(PRA) application. Data were exported to QTIPlot for
2
FIG. 2. The intervals between decays detected from the twin
14
C source over a 100 s period. Bin size is 0.0208 ms. The
dead time of the detector can be clearly seen as a set of
empty bins near zero ( 0.1875 s). The estimate of the dead
time given by the PRA software was 0.192 s, which agrees
with our calculation of 0.222 0.045 s.
correction, analysis, and plotting.
PROCEDURE
Determination of detector dead time
Measurements of XL , XR , XLR , & XB were taken from
the twin 14 C source with an acquisition time of 100 s.
The value of W thus obtained was 0.222 0.045 s. This
was used to correct the data in the next part of the ex-
periment according to eqn 1. An interval histogram for
the activity XLR is displayed in fig 2, showing the dead
time as a series of empty bins near zero.
Nuclear decay is a fundamentally stochastic process.
The total counts we have measured are samples from a
population which obeys an underlying Poisson distribu-
tion; the error in the number
of counts X, measured over
erty to calculate the uncertainty in our value of W , and
to apply error bars to the data below, which were taken
into account by QTIPlots curve fitting algorithm.
Silver activation and decay
An Ag foil was irradiated for 16 minutes, then dropped
in front of the GM counter. Data acquisition was begun
approximately 1 minute before the sample was dropped,
and continued for approximately 40 minutes.
In the PRA application, the start of the data (i.e. the
time at which the sample landed in front of the counter,
 3

TABLE I. The meanlives obtained from the fitting session

in QTIPlot, and the canonical values from [1][2].

Isotope Calculated (s) Accepted(s) Discrepancy ()

110
Ag 33.0 0.8 35.43 3.0375
108
Ag 202 4 206.19 1.0475

The data are plotted in fig. 3, along with the fitted

curve and its components. Following [6] and [7], we have
used a logarithmic yaxis, such that exponentials appear
as straight lines on the graph. The composite nature of
the decay curve is immediately apparent.

FIG. 3. The decay of radioactivity in the sample after irradi-
ation, measured in counts per 5second bin. For clarity, only
the first 1200 seconds are shown here. The green curve is the
secondorder exponential (see eqn. 3) which was fitted to the
data; it is the sum of the two exponential decay curves (blue
and violet) and the constant background noise (cyan).
relative to the start of acquisition) was located to the
nearest 0.01 s by manually examining the counting rate
with a bin size of 0.05 s. This was found at 60.10 s, where
the count rate rose from 10 to >100 s1 . Data before
this point were discarded.
To ensure a sensible exponential fit, the bin size (T in
eqn 1) was adjusted to 5.00 s such that all bins contained
more than one count; this value was determined by find-
Discussion
Data are presented in Table I, together with the canon-
ical values given by [1][2], and discepancies. We have
identified t1 & t2 as representing the meanlives of 110 Ag
& 108 Ag respectively, despite the fact that the values do
not agree the difference in the former case being some
three times greater than the range of our statistical error!
To justify this assumption, another fitting session was
performed in QTIPlot, but with the meanlives (t1 & t2 )
held fixed; the only free parameters were the background
activity and the initial activities of each isotope.
y0 = 7.5 0.2 s -1
a1 = 1422 18 s -1
a2 = 2664 s -1

0 s
ing the longest interval between data points. The data
t1 = 35.43
0 s
were then exported in tabular (CSV) format to QTIPlot
for correction according to eqn 1 and fitting of the decay t2 = 206.19
curve. R2 = 0.99563
2
/doF = 0.96565
RESULTS
Judging from the R2 value, the difference in fit between
this curve and the previous one is negligible ( 104 ).
Curve fitting
This demonstrates that the difference between our val-
ues and those of [1][2] can be almost entirely accounted
A secondorder exponential was fitted to the data in for by uncertainty in the initial activities a1 & a2 . We
QTIplot: can therefore conclude that t1 & t2 do, in fact, represent
110
Ag & 108 Ag, resulting from neutron capture by 109 Ag
y = y0 + a1 et/t1 + a2 et/t2 (3) & 107
Ag.
The following parameters were obtained from the fitting
session:

CONCLUSION
s-1

y0 = 7.5 0.2
s-1

a1 = 1460 24 The decay of induced radioactivity in a silver foil af-
s-1

a2 = 280 10 ter neutron bombardment was measured. Fitting the

t1 = 33 0.8 s data to a secondorder exponential yielded meanlives
t2 = 202 4 s of 33.0 0.8 and 202 4 seconds, which we have identi-
R2 = 0.99572 fied with the 110 Ag and 108 Ag isotopes respectively. By
2 holding the meanlives fixed and using only the initial
/doF = 0.94936

& background activities as the free parameters to fit an-
other decay curve, we have demonstrated that our data
are well in agreement with the values given by [1][2].
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to thank Marek Dolleiser for his
advice on statistical analysis of the results of this exper-
iment.
jmci4174@uni.sydney.edu.au
[1] M.-M. Be, V. Chiste, C. Dulieu, E. Browne, V. Chechev,
N. Kuzmenko, R. Helmer, A. Nichols, E. Schonfeld, and
4
R. Dersch, Table of Radionuclides, Monographie BIPM-
5, Vol. 1,3 (Bureau International des Poids et Mesures,
Pavillon de Breteuil, F-92310 Sevres, France, 2004).
[2] M.-M. Be, V. Chiste, C. Dulieu, E. Browne, C. Baglin,
V. Chechev, N. Kuzmenko, R. Helmer, F. Kondev,
D. MacMahon, and K. Lee, Table of Radionuclides, Mono-
graphie BIPM-5, Vol. 3 (Bureau International des Poids
et Mesures, Pavillon de Breteuil, F-92310 Sevres, France,
2006).
[3] J. R. de Laeter et al., Pure Appl. Chem. 75, 638 (2003).
[4] K. Shibata et al., J. Nucl. Sci. Technol. 48, 1 (2011).
[5] U. of Sydney, Senior experimental physics lab notes, ex-
periment 23: Nuclear lifetimes (2015).
[6] D. College, Physics 17, Lab 6: Neutron Activation of Silver
(1997).
[7] C. S. University, Chemistry 481 lab manual: Neutron Ac-
tivation of Silver (2009).
[8] U. of Sydney, Senior experimental physics supplementary
notes (2007).