Radioactivity - Nuclear Physics NOTEs
Radioactivity - Nuclear Physics NOTEs
Radioactivity - Nuclear Physics NOTEs
q)The half life of radon-222 is 3.8 days.calculate the fraction of a sample of radon-
222 remaining undecayed after a time of 11.4 days.
ANS:-
Q) The half-life of radon-222 is 3.8 days. How much of a 100 g sample is left
after 15.2 days?
A = A0e(- λt )
A is the activity.
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Mass defect and nuclear binding energy
Relation between energy and mass
E =mc2
Binding energy and Mass defect
Nuclear binding energy is the minimum energy that would be required
to disassemble the nucleus of an atom into its component parts. These
component parts are neutrons and protons, which are collectively
called nucleons
Mass defect is the difference between the mass of a nucleus and the
sum of the masses of its constituent particles.
To calculate the mass defect:
1. add up the masses of each proton and of each neutron that make
up the nucleus,
2. subtract the actual mass of the nucleus from the combined mass
of the components to obtain the mass defect.
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Binding energy per nucleon
it is the total energy needed to separate all the nucleons in a nucleus
divided by the number of nucleons.
The most stable nuclides are those with the highest binding energy per
nucleon.(like Fe-56)
Very stable nuclides have binding energies per nucleon of about 8MeV.
NUCLEAR EQUATIONS
for any nuclear reaction to take place, three conditions must be met.
Conservation of proton number(Z)
Conservation of nucleon number(A)
Conservation of mass energy.
FOR EXAMPLE
14 4 17 1
7N + 2He 8O + 1H
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fusion
fission
The
relevance
of binding
energy per
nucleon to
nuclear
fusion and
to nuclear
fission
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Rutherford's model of an atom :gold foil experiment
Fig. (1)
1. Most of the space inside the atom is empty because most of the α-particles
passed through the gold foil without getting deflected.
2. Very few particles were deflected from their path, indicating that the
positive charge of the atom occupies very little space.
3. A very small fraction of α-particles were deflected by very large angles,
indicating that all the positive charge and mass of the gold atom were
concentrated in a very small volume within the atom.
Problems
1) Indium-115 has a half-life equal to 4.5 hours. If the sample were originally 12 mg how
much would remain after 13.5 hours? What is the fraction remaining?
2) If 100.0 g of carbon-14 decays until only 25.0 g of carbon is left after 11 460 y, what is
the half-life of carbon-14?
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3) Gold-198 has a half-life of 2.7 days. How much of a 96 g sample of gold198 will be left
after 8.1 days?
4)Write a nuclear reaction for each step in the formation of 84 Po 218
from 92 U 238 , which proceeds by a series of decay reactions involving the step-wise
emission of α, β, β, α, α, α, α particles, in that order.
7)A difference of 2.3 eV separates two energy levels in an atom .What is the frequency of
radiation emitted when the atom makes a transition from the upper level to the lower
level.
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