The nuclear decay process seems to be random yet predictable. The shaking of the cup is random and which pennies come up heads is also random. What can be predicted is the amount of pennies that will decay. For each trial the amount of decayed pennies should decrease by half. The experiment achieved the radioactive decay curve. The amount of pennies that decayed weren’t exactly half, but it was close enough to see the curve and make the theory valid. From comparing my data with other teams in the room the results were very similar. I performed a T-test with my experiment and one other group. With a P-value of 0.9678 the difference is not significant.
I found research online using 50 M&Ms. There was a total of 7 trials. The trials went from 50, 25, 12, 8, 3, and 2 to 0. The amount of M&Ms decayed almost by half each time. The results are closely related to mine. The decay law leads to an exponential decay which reaches zero in an infinite amount of time. A useful measure of rate at which the material decays is given by the half-life. This is the time taken for the number of undecayed nuclei to decrease by half the initial amount. The results from the experiments prove this theory. My results confirm the M&M experiment because as each trial went by the results were reduced to almost half the amount. There was also a radioactive decay curve making the results more valid.
In order to change the procedure I would increase the sample size to see if there was a blind error in the theory making the power of the experiment increase. I would increase the number of pennies to 200 and record my results. Then repeat the same experiment twice so I could perform a T-test to see how significant the results would be.
To improve this investigation I would use the knowledge from this lab you find the relative age of rocks. Give students a Half Life graph of a compound to see if they can figure out the ages. For example half life of U-235 graphed. This way the class can try to figure out the radiometric ages of different rocks.
Works Cited
mckinney, f. (2008, june 6). Age of rocks and fossils. Retrieved march 21, 2009, from ucmp.berkeley.edu: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/McKinney.html
Streiger, F. (1996, June 5). Radioactive Dating. Retrieved March 19, 2009, from FStreiger: http://www.fsteiger.com/radioact.html
(Streiger, 1996)
