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Honors Radioactive Decay Purpose

The document describes an activity where students use candies to model radioactive decay and determine half-life. Students place candies in a box and shake it at time intervals to simulate decay, counting the candies that flip over. They record the number of candies remaining across two trials in a data table and graph the results to calculate average decay and determine that the half-life is 3 seconds.

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James Andrews
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945 views

Honors Radioactive Decay Purpose

The document describes an activity where students use candies to model radioactive decay and determine half-life. Students place candies in a box and shake it at time intervals to simulate decay, counting the candies that flip over. They record the number of candies remaining across two trials in a data table and graph the results to calculate average decay and determine that the half-life is 3 seconds.

Uploaded by

James Andrews
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Honors Radioactive Decay

Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to model the concept of half-life using a sample to represent radioactive
atoms. Understanding how half-life works will help you understand how forensic chemists can use
carbon-14 dating to determine the age of artifacts.

Materials
200 M&M®, pennies or other small candies/items with two distinct sides,
shoebox or another small box with a lid.

Procedure

1. Place 200 candies in the shoebox, lettered sides up. The candies will stand for atoms of a carbon-
14.
2. Cover the box and shake it for three seconds.
3. Remove the lid and take out any candies that are now showing lettered sides down. These candies
represent the carbon-14 atoms that decayed during the time interval. Count and record in a data
table the number of decayed atoms and the number of remaining, not decayed, atoms.
4. Continue repeating steps 2 and 3 until all atoms have decayed or you have reached 30 seconds on
the data table.
5. Repeat the entire experiment (steps 1–4) a second time and record all data.

Data
Complete a data table, like the one below, for each trial.

Trial 1 Trial 2

Time Radioactive Atoms Time Radioactive Atoms


(seconds) Atoms Decayed (seconds) Atoms Decayed
Remaining Remaining
(Not (Not
Decayed) Decayed)

0 200 0 0 200 0

3 104 96 3 93 107

6 55 49 6 54 39

9 28 27 9 23 31

12 16 12 12 8 15
15 11 5 15 1 7

18 8 3 18 0 1

21 5 3 21 0 0

24 2 3 24 0 0

27 0 2 27 0 0

30 0 0 30 0 0

Calculations

Average Atoms Remaining

Time (seconds) Radioactive Atoms Remaining (Not


Decayed)

0 200

3 99

6 55

9 26

12 12

15 6

18 4
21 3

24 1

27 0

30 0

Graph

Conclusion
Answer the following
questions in complete
sentences, and justify your
responses.

After how many time intervals (shakes) did one-half of your atoms (candies) decay?

Half the atoms took 1 interval to decay.

What is the half-life of your substance?

3 seconds.

If the half-life model decayed perfectly, how many atoms would be remaining (not decayed)
after 12 seconds?

13 atoms

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