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Experiment 1: Estimating Half‐Life In this experiment, you will be estimating the half‐life of a radioactive isotope. While it would be nice to do an actual decay experiment, the time, money, and equipment required is unrealistic. Instead, Skittles® candies will be used to demonstrate the concept of half‐life
Procedure 1. On a flat surface, count the number of Skittles that were in your bag. Record this number in Trial 0 of Table 2 as the number of Skittles “S” Up (Parent Atoms) and record 0 for all other values in Trial 0. 2. Place all the Skittles into your cup. Place your hand over the opening of the cup and shake it several times. 3. Pour the Skittles out onto a flat surface, such as a table or countertop. Take a photo of your “decayed” candies. 4. Count the number of Skittles with the "S" facing up. Record this number as the Parent Atoms in Table 2. Place the parent atoms back into the cup. Note: The "S" on some Skittles may be faded. Take care in counting which have the "S" and which don't. 5. Count the number of Skittles with the "S" facing down. Record this number in Table 2. These Skittles represent the daughter atoms. Set them to the side. 6. Shake the cup containing the remaining parent atoms several times. 7. Repeat Steps 3 ‐ 6 until all of your "parent atoms" have decayed. Record your data in Table 2. 8. When complete, throw the candies away
What is the half‐life of your skittles? _____________ trials
2. Suppose the isotope your Skittles represented was Tin-109 and the trials represented the number of half-
lives.\( { }^{109} \mathrm{Sn} \) half life is 18 minutes
a. How old was the sample at the end of the experiment? Include your calculations.
b. Use the ratio of daughter to parent atoms to calculate the age of the sample in Trial 3. Include
your calculations. t = (half –life)(ln ___/ ln 0.5 )
In the blank, put in the ratio of daughter to parent (as a decimal) you got for trial 3.
t = ________________
c. Calculate the age of the sample after three half-lives. Does this answer match your answer to b?
Why or why not? Include your calculations.
3. Identify and describe similarities and differences between this experiment and radioactive decay in
nature.
