3-15-11
Students modeled radioactive decay in two ways. In the first exercise they cut an index card in half to show how 1/2 of carbon-14 decays to nitrogen-14. The students realized that 10 cuts or more made seeing (measuring) the carbon-14 difficult. At a half life of 5700 years, carbon-dating is only good to about 50,000 years. In the second activity they used an element named “cubium.” One side of each wooden cube was marked. When shaken in a box the cubes that ended with the marked side up were daughter atoms. Multiple trials will produce decay curves and the half-life will be calculated.
Index card cut to show decay of carbon-14
Cubium activity to model half-life