Modern Physics Laboratory

MP8 Radioactive Decay and Radiation Absorption

D. Summary of the experiment (20 pts)

Summarize what you have done and your interpretation of the results, especially in respect to how
they match the goal of the experiment and what you have learnt from this experiment (2-3 paragraphs,
less than 450 words).
This experiment aimed at investigating the nuclear phenomena associated with
radioactive decay of uranium-238 and radiation absorption of caesium-137 with various
thicknesses of polyethylene absorbers.
We divided the experiment into two parts. Before the beginning of the first part of
experiment, we measured the background radioactive counts in 1000s. The measured value
741
=0.741 s1 . This value
was 741. Therefore, the background count rate would be
1000 s
could be used to find the corrected count rate by subtracting the measured count rate with
background count rate. For the first part of experiment, we were mainly focusing on
measuring the radioactive counts of uranium-238 in 10s-interval from 0s to 410s by using the
GM tube. We observed that the radioactive counts in 10s-interval decreased gradually from
290 counts to 29 counts. We could then work out the corrected count rate. It decreased from
28.3s-1 to 2.2s-1. By plotting a graph of natural logarithm of corrected count rate versus time t,
we could found the decay rate R by the slope of graph. The experimental decay rate R was
0.0069s-1. Hence, we could further work out the half-life time of uranium-238 by equation of
ln 2
t1 =
R . The experimental half lifetime was 100.5s, which was not so accurate when
2
comparing with the published value of 72s. This might be attributed to the fact that the
background radiation and radioactive decay of uranium-238 were random. Conducting more
trials of the experiment could reduce this inaccuracy. However, due to the time limitation, we
could not make it so accurate. For the second part of experiment, we were going to measure
the radioactive counts of caesium-137 by varying the thickness of PE absorbers from 0cm (no
absorber) to 0.1575cm. The counts decreased from 5338 to 443, so the corrected count rate
decreased from 52.64s-1 to 3.69s-1. By plotting the graph of natural logarithm of corrected
count rate versus thickness of absorber x, we could find out the linear absorption coefficient
by the slope of the graph. The experimental linear absorption coefficient was
17.141cm-1. After obtaining , we further worked out the half-value thickness of PE by
ln 2
equation of x 1 = . The experimental half-value thickness was 0.0404cm. Thus, we
2
could say that PE was a good radiation absorber as a relatively thin layer of PE could already
absorb half of the radiation emitted. Similar to the first part of experiment, errors might be
present due to the randomness of background radiation and ceasium-137. This could be
improving by doing more trials.
To conclude, we successfully investigate the nuclear phenomena with radiation decay
and radiation absorption. The experimental half-life time of uranium-238 was 100.5s. The
experimental half-value thickness of PE was 0.0404cm.