PRE-CALCULUS ACTIVITY: RADIOACTIVE HALF-LIFE
CREATED BY TIFFANY ANDERSON, BEAVER COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL
If you need a brief review of logarithms, this is a good resource.
READING:
A. Information about Uranium and EPA Standards
C, The Mathematics Behind Half-Life and Exponential Decay
Formulas for calculating exponential decay can be found here.
For more information on the mathematics of radioactive decay:
B. Information about Nuclear Radiation
HALF LIVES AND DECAY CONSTANTS:
ISOTOPE
HALF LIFE
DECAY CONSTANT (s-1)
Uranium 238
4.5x10
5.0x10
Plutonium 239
2.4x10
9.2x10
Carbon 14
5570 years
3.9x10
Radium 226
1622 years
1.35x10
Free neutron 239
15 minutes
1.1x10
Radon 220
52 seconds
1.33x10
Lithium 8
0.84 seconds
0.825
Bismuth 214
1.6x10
4.33x10
Lithium 8
6x10
1.2x10
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GENERAL PRACTICE:
Exponential and Logarithmic Equations review
1. 4x = 6
2. 5x = 2
3. 124x = 1020
4. 73x = 2400
5. 2 x+1 – 5 = 22
6. 5x + 12x = 5x + 7
7. 2 x+1 = 22x+3
8. 3x+3 = 9x+1
9. log3x + log35 = 2
10. 2 log x = log 8 + log 5 – log 10
11. log9 x =
FURTHER RESOURCES:
Interactive game about radiometric dating
Information about the Goiania accident in Brasil
Information about the Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine
Radioactive Decay: A Chemistry Perspective from Khan Academy
Further practice with exponential decay and logs
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