Plutonium 241 has a decay rate of 4.8 % per year. How many years will it take a 50 kg sample to deca

Discussion in 'Calculator Requests' started by math_celebrity, Sep 30, 2021.

  1. math_celebrity

    math_celebrity Administrator Staff Member

    Plutonium 241 has a decay rate of 4.8 % per year. How many years will it take a 50 kg sample to decay to 10 kg?

    Since 4.8% is 0.048, we have decay as:
    50 * (1 - 0.048)^n = 10
    0.952^n = 0.2

    Typing this into our math engine, we get:
    n = 32.7186 years
     

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