Advertisements
Advertisements
Question
Why is it found experimentally difficult to detect neutrinos in nuclear β-decay?
Solution
Neutrinos are difficult to detect experimentally in β decay because they are uncharged particles with almost no mass. Also, neutrinos interact very weakly with matter, so they are very difficult to detect.
APPEARS IN
RELATED QUESTIONS
The decay constant of radioactive substance is 4.33 x 10-4 per year. Calculate its half life period.
State the law of radioactive decay.
The half-life of `""_38^90 "Sr"` is 28 years. What is the disintegration rate of 15 mg of this isotope?
When charcoal is prepared from a living tree, it shows a disintegration rate of 15.3 disintegrations of 14C per gram per minute. A sample from an ancient piece of charcoal shows 14C activity to be 12.3 disintegrations per gram per minute. How old is this sample? Half-life of 14C is 5730 y.
Consider the situation of the previous problem. Suppose the production of the radioactive isotope starts at t = 0. Find the number of active nuclei at time t.
The isotope \[\ce{^57Co}\] decays by electron capture to \[\ce{^57Fe}\] with a half-life of 272 d. The \[\ce{^57Fe}\] nucleus is produced in an excited state, and it almost instantaneously emits gamma rays.
(a) Find the mean lifetime and decay constant for 57Co.
(b) If the activity of a radiation source 57Co is 2.0 µCi now, how many 57Co nuclei does the source contain?
c) What will be the activity after one year?
A source contains two species of phosphorous nuclei, \[\ce{_15^32P}\] (T1/2 = 14.3 d) and \[\ce{_15^33P}\] (T1/2 = 25.3 d). At time t = 0, 90% of the decays are from \[\ce{_15^32P}\]. How much time has to elapse for only 15% of the decays to be from \[\ce{_15^32P}\]?
Obtain an expression for the decay law of radioactivity. Hence show that the activity A(t) =λNO e-λt.
Two radioactive materials X1 and X2 have decay constants 10λ and λ respectively. If initially, they have the same number of nuclei, then the ratio of the number of nuclei of X1 to that of X2 will belie after a time.
When a nucleus in an atom undergoes a radioactive decay, the electronic energy levels of the atom ______.