Protactinium generator

Here are the results we obtained in class on 6 February 2013 in an experiment to plot the decay curve of protactinium-234 obtained by "milking" this isotope from solution in a protactinium generator.

Method

The Protactinium generator is ideal for demonstrating radioactive decay, as the half life of the Pa-234m isotope is about 70 s, meaning that a decay curve can be plotted in 5-10 mins. Either a datalogger and GM tube sensor or a standard GM tube and counter may be used. [CREDIT: Timstar online catalogue]

Results

Under construction (I seem to have misplaced the results!)

The raw data are shown in the table below, and are also available as a tab delimited text file.

`t` / s	`count` / 30^-1 s^-1	corrected `count` / 30^-1 s^-1
15	171	166
45	141	136
75	113	108
105	91	86
135	80	75
165	52	47
195	40	35
225	33	28
255	38	33
285	33	28
315	24	19
345	21	16
375	22	17
405	20	15
435	20	15
465	21	16
495	13	8

`t` / s	`count` / 30^-1 s^-1	corrected `count` / 30^-1 s^-1
15	171	166
45	141	136
75	113	108
105	91	86
135	80	75
165	52	47
195	40	35
225	33	28
255	38	33
285	33	28
315	24	19
345	21	16
375	22	17
405	20	15
435	20	15
465	21	16
495	13	8

`t` / s	`count` / 30^-1 s^-1	corrected `count` / 30^-1 s^-1
15	171	166
45	141	136
75	113	108
105	91	86
135	80	75
165	52	47
195	40	35
225	33	28
255	38	33
285	33	28
315	24	19
345	21	16
375	22	17
405	20	15
435	20	15
465	21	16
495	13	8

Protactinium generator

Method

Results

Links

`t` / s	`count` / 30^-1 s^-1	corrected `count` / 30^-1 s^-1
15	171	166
45	141	136
75	113	108
105	91	86
135	80	75
165	52	47
195	40	35
225	33	28
255	38	33
285	33	28
315	24	19
345	21	16
375	22	17
405	20	15
435	20	15
465	21	16
495	13	8