Activity calculation

[Gilded]

OK, tried to calculate the activity of U-238 with Bq as activity units.

 

Got about 9000 disintegrations per second in a gram of U-238.

 

Is this anywhere near the correct value? If not, then I'm rather pissed off since I calculated it quite long. Where could I find the listed activities / mol?

[swansont]

OK' date=' tried to calculate the activity of U-238 with Bq as activity units.

 

Got about 9000 disintegrations per second in a gram of U-238.

 

Is this anywhere near the correct value? If not, then I'm rather pissed off since I calculated it quite long. Where could I find the listed activities / mol?[/quote']

 

I get about 12500 dps, using a half-life of 4.468 billion years.

 

Show the calculation - what values did you use?

[VendingMenace]

i would imagine that you wouldn't need the activity to check your answer. If you knew the half-life of U-238 (i suspect that is easy to find) then you can see if your answer makes sense. Ie. would 9000 dis./sec over the half-life of U-238 amount to half of the U-238 in a 1 gram sample being disentigrated.

 

I think this would work? Who knows though, i never really took nuclear physics and all that.

[Gilded]

Hmmh. I used the same half-life as you did swansont. I probably did something wrong in calculating how many atoms of U-238 is in a gram... I used the http://www.onlineconversion.com conversion from gram to amu, then calculated how many atoms is in there. :|