Physics Athens 2016

Activity

Radioactivity it is a random event which can only be adequately described using statistics

• Activity: total number of disintegrations (decays) per unit time - SI unit is the Becquerel (Bq) - nuclear transformation per second – (Curie (Ci) activity of 1 gr of Ra-226)

1 Ci = 37 x 10 9 Bq = 37 GBq

• Activity → A(t) = l N(t) where N(t) is the number of radioactive nuclei at time t

• Decay constant l → characteristic parameter that describes how fast a particular nucleus transforms (probability of disintegration per unit time)