INVESTIGATIONS+OF+HALF-LIFE+PRACTICAL

IB PHYSICS > PRACTICAL WORK > IB IA EXPERIMENTS [|IA criteria checklist.doc] - always a good idea to look at this before submitting your work. =PRACTICAL: INVESTIGATIONS OF HALF-LIFE=

**PHET SIMULATIONS are all available on the PHET website and Studywiz.**
Use the bag of coins and the tray to construct an exponential decay curve. Throw them all out of the bag and remove the 'heads'. On graph paper, plot a graph of Remaining coins against number of throws. Draw a gradient at 5 points on the best-fit curve and calculate the gradient at each point (with a unit).

Use the PHET alpha-decay simulation to estimate the half-life of Polonium-211 (the steps in the sim are 5ms). This can be done in Excel or on graph paper.

Use the PHET simulation of beta-decay to estimate the half life of Carbon-14 (work out the steps using the 'single atom' tab). This can be done in Excel or on graph paper.

Use the PHET simulation Radioactive Dating Game and deduce the ages of the objects.