What is the half-life of cobalt-60?

What is the half-life of cobalt-60?

about 5.3 years
The time required for a radioactive substance to lose 50 percent of its radioactivity by decay is known as the half-life. The half-life of cobalt-60 is about 5.3 years. How are people exposed to cobalt-60?

What percent of a sample of CO 60 will be left after 25 years?

Figure 11.3. 1 For cobalt-60, which has a half-life of 5.27 years, 50% remains after 5.27 years (one half-life), 25% remains after 10.54 years (two half-lives), 12.5% remains after 15.81 years (three half-lives), and so on….11.3: Half-Life and Radioisotopic Dating.

How do you find the half-life of cobalt-60?

The half life is the time taken for the mass of the substance to decrease by a half. In this case, the amount of substance remaining is 20% of the initial amount (0.1 g out of initial 0.5 g). So it would take 2.32 half lives to decay this much, which is 2.32 x 5.2 which is 12.064 years.

Why is the half-life of cobalt-60 important?

Cobalt-60 is the longest-lived isotope of cobalt, with a half-life of 5.27 years. It is produced by irradiating the stable isotope cobalt-59 with neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Cobalt-60 is used in the inspection of materials to reveal internal structure, flaws, or foreign objects and in the sterilization of food.

How do you find half-life in physics?

The time required for half of the original population of radioactive atoms to decay is called the half-life. The relationship between the half-life, T1/2, and the decay constant is given by T1/2 = 0.693/λ.

What is the initial amount of cobalt-60 in the sample?

0.800 g
The value of the initial amount of the cobalt-60 is M0=0.800 g M 0 = 0.800 g .

What part of titanium would remain after 1 hour?

What fraction of titanium would remain after one hour? minutes) there are 10 half lives. Therefore the answer is: 9) A medical institution requests 1 g of bismuth-214, which has a half life of 20 min.

What is the advantage of cobalt 60?

The advantages of Co/sup 60/ therapy over conventional x-ray therapy, stemming from the fact that in the lst instance energy absorption within the tissues is by the Compton effect and in the 2nd case by the photoelectric effect, are: (1) increased skin tolerance, (2) reduced bone absorption, (3) increase in depth dose.

What problem does cobalt 60 solve?

Cobalt-60 is used in the inspection of materials to reveal internal structure, flaws, or foreign objects and in the sterilization of food. In medicine, it is used to treat cancer and to sterilize medical equipment.

What is the half life of Cobalt 60?

Cobalt-60 The cobalt-60isotope undergoes beta decaywith a half-life of 5.272 years. Cobalt-60 decays to Nickel-60 plus an electron and an electron antineutrino. The decay is initially to a nuclear excited state of Nickel-60 from which it emits either one or two gamma rayphotons to reach the ground state of the Nickel isotope.

How is the half life of carbon-10 calculated?

A plot of the mass of a sample of carbon-10 versus time looks something like this: Mass versus time graph, with the mass decreasing exponentially over time. The half-life is plotted as a red point. One funny property of exponential decay is that the total mass of radioactive isotopes never actually reaches zero.

Where does the radiation from Cobalt 60 go?

Most of the radiation from the decay of cobalt-60 is in the form of gamma emissions; some is in the form of beta particles. Beta particles are generally absorbed in the skin and do not pass through the entire body. Gamma radiation, however, can penetrate the body.

What happens when Cobalt 60 decays to nickel 60?

Cobalt-60 decays to Nickel-60 plus an electron and an electron antineutrino. The decay is initially to a nuclear excited state of Nickel-60 from which it emits either one or two gamma ray photons to reach the ground state of the Nickel isotope.