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A Simple College Experiment to Measure Half-life of 40K using GM Counter.

P. K. Joshi

 

Abstract

This is a simple college experiment to measure the half-life of 40K which is about 1.248 ± 0.003 billion years as given in literature. This experiment can be carried out without any standard radioactive sources, thereby, allowing the educational institutions to avoid the purchase of radioactive sources involving a lot of procedural steps. This experiment can be performed with standard KI salt available in the market.
Introduction: At college level it is very essential to conduct simple experiments which support theoretical topics being covered in the syllabus. Measuring lifetimes of nuclei, which are in the range of billion years, can be a very attractive topic for college students. Similar experiments can be see in ref [1-4]
In this experiment, KI salt available without requiring any permissions, from the market can be used to measure the half-life of 40K.