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    Radioactive Decay. Lab Report 5

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    Luwa Matthews
    The document summarizes an experiment investigating the radioactive decay of cobalt. Four cobalt coins of varying ages were measured for decay rates at different angles and distances from a Geiger counter. The half-life of cobalt was calculated as 5.2 and 4.88 years using two different data analysis methods. The decay rate was found to vary with angle but not distance as expected from the inverse square law.

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    Radioactive Decay. Lab Report 5

    Uploaded by

    Luwa Matthews
    4K views2 pages
    The document summarizes an experiment investigating the radioactive decay of cobalt. Four cobalt coins of varying ages were measured for decay rates at different angles and distances from a Geiger counter. The half-life of cobalt was calculated as 5.2 and 4.88 years using two different data analysis methods. The decay rate was found to vary with angle but not distance as expected from the inverse square law.

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    The document summarizes an experiment investigating the radioactive decay of cobalt. Four cobalt coins of varying ages were measured for decay rates at different angles and distances from a Geiger counter. The half-life of cobalt was calculated as 5.2 and 4.88 years using two different data analysis methods. The decay rate was found to vary with angle but not distance as expected from the inverse square law.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    4K views2 pages

    Radioactive Decay. Lab Report 5

    Uploaded by

    Luwa Matthews
    The document summarizes an experiment investigating the radioactive decay of cobalt. Four cobalt coins of varying ages were measured for decay rates at different angles and distances from a Geiger counter. The half-life of cobalt was calculated as 5.2 and 4.88 years using two different data analysis methods. The decay rate was found to vary with angle but not distance as expected from the inverse square law.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    You are on page 1of 2

    Joseph Berg

    Luwa Matthews

    Sunday, May 16, 2010

    Investigating the Radioactive Decay of Cobalt

    Abstract:

    The purpose of this lab was to determine the decay constant and half-life of Cobalt and how its
    decay rate varies with angle and distance. Cobalt coins of different ages were placed in front of a Geiger
    counter and the decay rates were measured at different angles and distances from the Geiger counter.
    Using different methods of data analysis, the half-life of the Cobalt sample was found to be 5.2 years
    and 4.88 years, with respective decay constants of 0.133 Hz and 0.1419 Hz. The rate of decay was found
    1
    not to be proportional to . Also, the decay rate varies with angle.
    r2

    Experimental Procedure:

    This experiment was carried out with four Co coins of different ages ranging from a few months
    to twenty years. Initially, the zero point decay rates of each of the coins were measured multiple times
    for 10 seconds each. Assuming that all four coins had the same starting rate, the decay rate measured
    was plotted against the relative age of each coin. The decay rate of the youngest coin was taken as the
    initial rate. See figure 1. The decay constant was found to be 0.133 Hz, with a half-life of 5.2 years.

    Another method of data analysis involved taking pairs of coins and determining the decay
    constant for each using equation 1.

    R old
    −ln
    ( )
    Rnew (1)
    ∆t

    where R refers to the zero point decay rates of the coins and ∆ t is the difference in their ages.

    The average decay rate was found to be 0.1419 Hz and the half-life was 4.88 years.

    The decay rate was found to vary with angle. See figure 3.

    1
    The decay rate was found to vary with distance, but not by , which tended to fall off too
    r2
    quickly. This can be attributed to the decay rate varying with angle. See figure 2, which has an
    exponential decay curve fitted to it.
    Conclusion:

     Using various methods, the he half-life of the Cobalt sample was found to be 5.2 years, 5.23
    years, and 4.58 years.
     The corresponding decay constants were found to be 0.133 Hz and 0.1419 Hz.
    1
     The decay rate of the cobalt sample was found not to be proportional to .
    r2

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