Half Life Simulation

PURPOSE:

    This exercise will demonstrate the radioactive breakdown of an element. As time increases the amount of radioactive material decreases and by starting with different amounts of radioactive material when you graph the data some interesting results will turn up.

MATERIALS:

    A container about the size of a shoebox and 80 pennies.

  1. Place the 80 pennies "heads up" in the covered container.

  2. Heads represents a radioactive element called "centsium".

  3. Tails represents the stable element called "tailsium".

  4. Tailsium is a completely different type of element as can be seen by looking at the features on the two sides of the penny.

PROCEDURE:

    1. Shake the closed container with the pennies vigorously for 15 seconds.

    1. Open the box and remove all the stable atoms of tailsium. Record how many radioactive atoms of centsium remain in the box.

    1. Repeat part 1 and 2 of the proceedure until there are no more tailsium atoms. Each time you do part 1 and 2 of the procedure this represents one half life period.

    1. Graph your data.

CONCLUSION:

  1. Why are 80 pennies used instead of some other number?

  1. If this was Carbon 14, how many atoms would remain at 2.4 half lives?

  1. Give a balanced equation for the breakdown of Carbon 14.

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