RADIOACTIVITY/NUCLEAR PHYSICS

Spontaneous and random nature of radioactive decay.

 Spontaneous:-means decay is not affected by any external factors such as
temperature and pressure .
 Random process:- means it cannot be predicted which nuclei will decay
next.
Half life(t1/2 )
It is the time taken for the number of undecayed nuclei to be reduced to
half its original number.

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?

Activity(A) and decay constant(λ).

Decay constant(λ):-
It is the probability per unit time of the decay of a nucleus.
Probability of decay=dN/N
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Probability of decay/time, λ = -(dN/dt)x1/N
dN/dt= - λN

WHERE dN/dt is known as activity(A).it is the number of nuclear decays occuring

per unit time in the source.Unit is becquerels(Bq) or s-1.
A=-(dN/dt)
= -( -λN)
= λN

Solution for dN/dt=- λN

 N =N0e(- λt )
Where N is the number of undecayed
nuclei after time t, and N0 is the initial
number of nuclei.

 A = A0e(- λt )
A is the activity.

Decay constant and half life

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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

NUCLEAR FUSION AND NUCLEAR FISSION

fission and fusion are nuclear reactions that produce energy. Fission is the
splitting of a heavy, unstable nucleus into two lighter nuclei, and fusion is the
process where two light nuclei combine together releasing vast amounts of
energy.

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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

Observations of Rutherford's scattering experiment:

As we can see in Fig. 1.

1. Most of the fast moving α-particles

passed straight through the gold foil.
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 2. Some of the α-particles were deflected by the foil by small angles.
3. Surprisingly one out of every 12,000 alpha particles appeared to rebound.

                                             Fig. (1)            

Conclusion of Rutherford's scattering experiment:

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.

5)Obtain the binding energy in MeV of 7N14 of mass 14.00307u.

 (mass of proton =1.0072766 u, mass of neutron=1.008664 u )

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.

Comparison between alpha, beta and gamma

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