Measuring Radon Decay Curves
摘要
In this activity we will measure the activity of a rubber balloon after being inflated, electrostatically charged and exposed to air, employing the same technique described in the previous experiment, and observing how this activity decreases over time, due to the lifetime of the radon progeny. Several examples of decay curves obtained with a Geiger counter are presented and discussed, and an estimate is given of the average lifetime which can be extracted from these measurements.