Advertisements
Advertisements
Question
What is alpha decay?
Advertisements
Solution
The parent nucleus emits an alpha particle which is the nucleus of helium atom. The parent nucleus thus loses two protons and two neutrons. The decay can be expressed as
\[\ce{^A_ZX -> ^{A - 4}_{Z - 2}Y + \alpha}\]
X is the parent nucleus and Y is the daughter nucleus. All nuclei with A > 210 undergo alpha decay.
The reason is that these nuclei have a large number of protons. The electrostatic repulsion between them is very large and the attractive nuclear forces between the nucleons are not able to cope with it. This makes the nucleus unstable and it tries to reduce the number of its protons by ejecting them in the form of alpha particles.
The total mass of the products of alpha decay is always less than the mass of the parent atom. The difference in the energy equivalent of the mass of the parent atom and that of the sum of masses of the products is called the Q-value, Q, of the decay and is equal to the kinetic energy of the products. We can write,
Q = [mX - mY - mHe]c2
APPEARS IN
RELATED QUESTIONS
Sample of carbon obtained from any living organism has a decay rate of 15.3 decays per gram per minute. A sample of carbon obtained from very old charcoal shows a disintegration rate of 12.3 disintegrations per gram per minute. Determine the age of the old sample given the decay constant of carbon to be 3.839 × 10−12per second.
Complete the following equation describing nuclear decay.
\[\ce{_7^12N -> _6^12C {+}}\] ______
Choose the correct option.
\[\ce{^60_27CO}\] decays with a half-life of 5.27 years to produce \[\ce{^60_28Ni}\]. What is the decay constant for such radioactive disintegration?
Write relation between decay constant of a radioelement and its half-life.
Derive the relationship between half-life and decay constant of a radioelement.
The half-life of 35S is 87.8 d. What percentage of 35S sample remains after 180 d?
The half-life of 67Ga is 78 h. How long will it take to decay 12% of the sample of Ga?
0.5 g sample of 201Tl decays to 0.0788 g in 8 days. What is its half-life?
65% of 111In sample decays in 4.2 d. What is its half-life?
A 3/4 of the original amount of radioisotope decays in 60 minutes. What is its half-life?
A sample of 32P initially shows activity of one Curie. After 303 days, the activity falls to 1.5 × 104 dps. What is the half-life of 32P?
The half-life of radon is 3.82 d. By what time would 99.9% of radon will be decayed?
In Hydrogen, the electron jumps from the fourth orbit to the second orbit. The wavenumber of the radiations emitted by an electron is ______
The decay constant λ of a certain radioactive material is 0.2166 per day. The average life τ of the radioactive material is ______
The half-life of a certain radioactive species is 6.93 × 105 seconds. What is the decay constant?
The half-life of a certain radioactive nucleus is 3.2 days. Calculate (i) decay constant (ii) average life of radioactive nucleus.
A radioactive substance of half-life 69.3 days is kept in a container. The time in which 80% of the substance will disintegrate will be ______
[take ln(5) = 1.61]
Most excited states of an atom have life times of about ____________.
The activity of a radioactive sample ____________.
A radioactive substance has half life of 3 hours. 75 % of the substance would decay in ____________.
What is beta decay?
The radioactivity of a sample is R1 at a time T1 and R2 at a time T2. If the half-life of the specimen is T, the number of atoms that have disintegrated in the time (T1 - T2) is proportional to ______.
A radioactive element has rate of disintegration 10,000 disintegrations per minute at a particular instant. After four minutes it become 2500 disintegrations per minute. The decay constant per minute is ______.
A radioactive sample S1 having the activity A1 has twice the number of nuclei as another sample S2 of activity A2 If A2 = 2A1 then the ratio of half-life of S1 to the half-life of S2 is ______.
The half-life of a radioactive substance is 10 days. The time taken for the `(7/8)^"th"` of the sample of disintegrates is ______.
Show that the number of nuclei of a radioactive material decreases exponentially with time.
Define half-life period.
In one mean lifetime of a radioactive element the fraction of the nuclei that has disintegrated is ______. [e is the base of natural logarithm]
