Problem

(a) Write the complete reaction equation for elec…

02:52

Problem 41 Hard Difficulty

(a) Calculate the energy released in the $\alpha$ decay of $^{238}\mathrm{U}$
(b) What fraction of the mass of a single $^{238} \mathrm{U}$ is destroyed in the decay? The mass of $^{234}\mathrm{Th}$ is 234.043593 $\mathrm{u}$ .
(c) Although the fractional mass loss is large for a single nucleus, it is difficult to observe for an entire macroscopic sample of uranium. Why is this?

Answer

a) 4.274 $\mathrm{MeV}$
b) $1.927 \times 10^{-5}$
c) since, the half life of Uranium-238 is very large (4.5 billion years), it decays at a very slow rate.
Thus, even fraction of loss mass is large; one cannot observe the loss in mass at macroscopic
level.

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Physics 103

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Chapter 31

Radioactivity and Nuclear Physics

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Video Transcript

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