RE: Practical demonstration of a half-life

["Morgan, Ben" <ben.morgan@cplc.com>]

Greetings,

I haven't seen this done but you might be able to rig up an "instrument"
using a battery, a meter (like an inexpensive voltage tester), some
resistors, and a switch (or switches). Wire up your circuit so that the
meter reading decreases by halves as the switches are manipulated. As the
half-lives go by the meter response will demonstrate that the activity is
decreasing without any visible change occurring in the "source".

Using a rotary switch with positions numbered to correspond to the number of
half-lives would make this a very simple device to use.

Regards,

Ben

ben.morgan@cplc.com


I'm not an official spokesperson for CP&L.
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