Chapter 24.

Radiation and Half Life

Detecting radiation
Human senses cannot detect radiation, so we need equipment to do this.

Photographic film

Henri Becquerel was studying X-rays using uranium in 1896.He used photographic films
to observe the effect of X rays and named this effect as Radioactivity.

Photographic film goes darker when it absorbs radiation, just like it does when it absorbs
visible light. The more radiation the film absorbs, the darker it is when it is developed.

People who work with radiation wear film badges, which are checked regularly to
monitor the levels of radiation absorbed. The diagram shows the inside of a typical
radiation badge when it is closed and opened.

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 There is a light-proof packet of photographic film inside the badge. The
more radiation this absorbs, the darker it becomes when it is developed. To get an
accurate measure of the dose received, the badge contains different materials that the
radiation must penetrate to reach the film. These may include aluminium, copper, lead-tin
alloy and plastic. There is also an open area at the centre of the badge.

Detecting radiation using a Geiger-Muller tube

The ionising effect of radiation is used in the Geiger-Muller (GM) tube as a means of
detecting the radiation.

The GM tube is a hollow cylinder filled with a gas at low pressure. The tube has a thin
window made of mica at one end. There is a central electrode inside the GM tube. A
voltage supply is connected across the casing of the tube and the central electrode as
shown in the following diagram.

When an alpha or beta or gamma radiation enters the tube it produces ions in the gas. The
ions created in the gas enable the tube to conduct. A current is produced in the tube for a
short time. The current produces a voltage pulse. Each voltage pulse corresponds to one
ionising radiation entering the GM tube. The voltage pulse is amplified and counted.

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Activity of a radioactive source
The activity of a radioactive source is the number of ionising radiations it emits per
second. Activity is measured in becquerels. The symbol for the becquerel is Bq. One
becquerel is one ionising radiation emitted per second, i.e. an alpha, a beta particle or a
gamma ray emitted per second. The activity of a radioactive source decreases with time.

One ionising radiation is produced when one nucleus the source decays. This is a one-
time process.

Background radiation
Sources

Radiation is all around us. It comes from radioactive substances including the ground, air,
building materials and food. Radiation is also found in cosmic rays from space. Move
your mouse over the diagram to check your understanding of this.

Type of
Source
radiation

Cosmic rays Radiation that reaches the Earth from outerspace

Animals All animals emit natural levels of radiation

Rocks Some rocks give off radioactive radon gas

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 Type of
Source
radiation

Soil and Radioactive materials from rocks in the ground are

plants absorbed by the soil and hence passed on to plants

Some rocks contain radioactive substances that produce a radioactive gas called radon.
The left-hand pie chart shows the average contribution of these different sources to
natural background radiation.

Radioactive decay

The nuclei of radioactive atoms are unstable. They break down and change into a
completely different type of atom. This process is called radioactive decay. For
example, carbon-14 decays to nitrogen-14 when it emits beta radiation.

Over time, as the unstable atoms in a source of radiation change, the activity of the source
goes down because there are fewer unstable atoms present to decay.

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Activity of radioactive elements

Number of decays per second is defined as the activity. It is measured in Bq(Becquererl)

1MBq =1000000 Bq
1kBq = 1000 Bq

Half Life

The time taken for the activity of a radioactive source to reduce by half is called the half-
life of the source.

The nuclei of radioactive atoms are unstable. They break down and change into a
completely different type of atom. This is called radioactive decay. For example, carbon-
14 decays to nitrogen-14 when it emits beta radiation. It is not possible to predict when
an individual atom might decay, but it is possible to measure how long it takes for half
the nuclei to decay. This is called the half-life of the radioactive isotope.

Ex:

There are two definitions of half-life, but they mean essentially the same thing:

1. the time it takes for the number of nuclei of the isotope in a sample to halve
2. the time it takes for the count rate from a sample containing the isotope to fall to
half its starting level

Different radioactive isotopes have different half-lives. For example, the half-life of
carbon-14 is 5,715 years, but the half-life of francium-223 is just 20 minutes.

Graphs

It is possible to find out the half-life of a radioactive substance from a graph of the count
rate against time. The graph shows the decay curve for a radioactive substance.

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The count rate drops from 80 to 40 counts a minute in two days, so the half-life is two
days. In the next two days, it drops from 40 to 20 - it halves. In the two days after that, it
drops from 20 to 10 - it halves again - and so on.

Measuring half-life
For the Credit Level examination you are expected to know how to measure the half-life
of a radioactive source. The half-life could be measured as follows.

First of all the background count rate is measured using a GM tube connected to a
counter. The count rate from the source is measured at regular fixed intervals over a
period of time.

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The background count rate is subtracted from each measurement and the actual count rate
from the source is measured. A graph of the count rate of the source against time is
plotted. From the graph, the time taken for the count rate to fall by half is measured. A
number of measurements are made and an average value is calculated. The average value
is the half-life of the radioactive source.

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01).A radioactive source has a half-life of 15 minutes.

At a particular time the activity of the source is 16 kBq. What is the activity of the source one
hour later?

In order to calculate the activity of the source one hour later you need to take
the following steps:

• 1 hour = 60 minutes
• 60 minutes = 4 x 15 minutes = 4 half-lifes
• Activity after 1 half-life = 16 x 0.5 = 8 kBq
• Activity after 2 half-lifes = 8 x 0.5 = 4 kBq
• Activity after 3 half-lifes = 4 x 0.5 = 2 kBq
• Activity after 4 half-lifes = 2 x 0.5 = 1 kBq

Activity of the radioactive source 1 hour later = 1 kBq

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