Subjects:
Objective: To determine and investigate the half life of thoron
The decay process of radioactive materials can be described by an exponential law. The equation is:
Where £f is the decay constant for the individual nuclei.
N0 is the number of unstable nuclei at time t=0.
Every radioactive nucleus has a definite time interval T1/2. That is the half-life. It is the number of unstable nuclei decreasing to half of original number. After the T1/2 ,
the number of nuclei reduces half and half.
In the experiment, a thoron-air mixture is blown into an ionization chamber subject to a saturation voltage. Alpha-decay
. . .
Conclusion:
The half life found in the experiment was (56. This produce a current, whose ternporal progression is recorded with TY-recorder or oscilloscope.
Discussion:
The experiment is to find out the half life of thoron. 220Rn has a 55 second half-life, much shorter than 222Rn(3. The result was near to actual half life of thoron. The error cause by random nature of the radiation is unpreventable. It is not as common as radon in the environment. The environment errors include background radiation of the environment. And the instrumental error in the experiment include the error cause by the poor connection of the wire would affect the result. The current is the measure of the number of decays per time interval, and thus the recorded graph represents a decay curve. Last but not the least si the human error cause by dividing the graph. By taking the mean of the result, the error can be reduced. The random nature of the radiation would also affect the current.
Essay's Topics
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