Unit of Activity

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 546.

The unit of activity is the becquerel (Bq) and is defined as one disintegration per second. The becquerel is a small unit of activity so the multiples are used:

The historical unit of activity is the curie (Ci), defined as the activity of one gram of pure Ra. To convert from curies to becquerel:

A source with a long half-life will have a smaller fraction of its atoms decaying per second than a short-lived source would. This means that to yield the same activity many more atoms of a long lived source will be required than atoms of a short lived source.