Question

Colbalt-60 has half-life of about 5 years, How many grams of a 300 g sample will remain after 20 years?

Answer 1

Answer:

After 20 years 18.75 gm of sample will remain.

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

The half-life is the time it takes for any amount of Cobalt-60 to decay to half the starting amount.

20 years is 4 times the half-life of 5 years. So there would be

(300 g) / 2⁴ = 18.75 g

remaining after 20 years.

In other words, after 5 years, 300 g decays to 150 g.

After another 5 years (total 10 years), 150 g decays to 75 g.

After another 5 years (total 15 years), 75 g decays to 37.5 g.

After another 5 years (total 20 years), 37.5 g decays to 18.75 g.