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Topic: nuclear decay  (Read 2015 times)

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Offline gvsu88

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nuclear decay
« on: December 11, 2011, 12:57:31 PM »
234U is radioactive and therefore undergoes a variety of decays. When 234U undergoes 2 electron capture followed by 2 beta decay a new more stable, element is formed. If a scientist monitored this process and detected that 3600 electrons had been released, how many grams of 234U must have decomposed. The exact mass of 234U = 234.040947 amu.

So far I have this

(3600 e-)(mol e- / 6.02e23 e-)(mol/mol)(234.04097)

I'm pretty sure this is right but my mole-mole ratio is off. I'm not really sure how to find that though because there are 3 equations, which i think look like this

U-234 + e-  -->  U-234
                                  + e- --> U-234
                                                       --> U-234 + B-
                                                                           --> U-234 + B-
But obviously those are all the same and don't tell me much. Unfortunately my prof didn't go into much more detail about these reactions so I'm not sure what I'm missing in them and again, I need to figure out the coefficients.  Thanks

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