Learning Exercise

Radioactive Half Life

This module explores half life and how the declining amount of a parent radioactive isotope can be expressed by an exponential-decay function. Student use spreadsheets to generate decay curves and calculate half life.

Material:: Natural Radioactive Series
Date last modified:: September 29, 2009
Created by:: Scott Cooper
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Natural Radioactive Series

Interative representation of radioactive decay series: Th232, Pu241, U238, U235. see more

Material Type:: Simulation
Author:: Yevgeniy Miretskiy
User Rating:: 5 stars

Exercise

There are two files, the first is a self paced powerpoint tutorial, the second contains the spreadsheet used to graph radioactive decay and calculate half life.

Additional Information: http://serc.carleton.edu/dev/introgeo/mathstatmodels/examples/34499.html

Disciplines

Science and Technology / Physics / Modern Physics / Nuclear and Particle
Science and Technology / Physics / Optics / Radiation

Audience

Topics

Radioactive Half Life

Type of Task

Learning Objectives

The goal of this module is to introduce the basic mathematics that describes radioactive decay. Students should become familiar with using spread sheets to calculate half life, remaining dose and rate of decay.

Assessment

There are pre and post-assessment questions embedded in the powerpoint tutorial.