During the 1950s and 1960s nearly 100 atmospheric nuclear bomb tests were conduc

Question

During the 1950s and 1960s nearly 100 atmospheric nuclear bomb tests were conducted at a test site northwest of Las Vegas. One of the radioactive elements in the fallout from the tests was lodine-131. It concentrates in the thyroid gland when ingested or Inhaled and has been linked to thyroid cancer. Approximately 160 million people living throughout the United States during the bomb tests might have been exposed to varying levels of iodine-131 for about two months following each test. However. iodine-131 has a radioactive half-life of about eight days so the risk of harmful exposure decreased rapidly within days of each bomb test. Some people inhaled the radioactive iodine, but most were exposed indirectly through consuming milk from cows or goats that grazed on contaminated pasture land. from: http://www8.nationatacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=6283 Iodine-131 decays by simultaneous beta-negative and gamma emission. Write this decay equation including the appropriate neutrino and determine the daughter isotope. The half life of Iodine-131 is approx. 8.1 days - how does the graph show this?

Explanation / Answer

half time is the time after which half of the mass has disintegrated

intially 500mg of iodine is present

at half life time the mass of iodine should be 250 mg

from graph the we have 250mg of iodine at t= 8.1 sec

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