You are a medical physicist at a hospital. You just installed a brand new isotope generator. To test the instrument out you make a small batch of a radioactive isotope. Then you place the product in your digital radiation counter. The counter measures the activity of the sample over a time period of several minutes. The activity as a function of time is shown in the figure below. Activity (kBq) 10 9 8 7 6 4 3 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 5 t (min) What is the decay constant of the isotope? Please, notice that the curve passes through at least one grid intersection point. What is the mean lifetime of the sample? What is the half life of the isotope? Can you estimate the half life from the graph? If you still have several tries left, just submit your estimation. Maybe you get the correct answer.
Radioactive decay
The emission of energy to produce ionizing radiation is known as radioactive decay. Alpha, beta particles, and gamma rays are examples of ionizing radiation that could be released. Radioactive decay happens in radionuclides, which are imbalanced atoms. This periodic table's elements come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Several of these kinds are stable like nitrogen-14, hydrogen-2, and potassium-40, whereas others are not like uranium-238. In nature, one of the most stable phases of an element is usually the most prevalent. Every element, meanwhile, has an unstable state. Unstable variants are radioactive and release ionizing radiation. Certain elements, including uranium, have no stable forms and are constantly radioactive. Radionuclides are elements that release ionizing radiation.
Artificial Radioactivity
The radioactivity can be simply referred to as particle emission from nuclei due to the nuclear instability. There are different types of radiation such as alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Along with these there are different types of decay as well.
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