IGCSE PHYSICS - How To Calculate Half Life (with background radiation)

• Define half life
Time taken for half the radioactive nuclei to decay

•Background Radiation
Background radiation is radiation that is always present in the environment around us
As a consequence, whenever an experiment involving radiation is carried out, some of the radiation that is detected will be background radiation. When carrying out experiments to measure half-life, the presence of background radiation must be taken into account

• Removing Background Radiation
Start by measuring background radiation (with no sources present)
Subtract the background count from each of your readings, in order to give a corrected count
The corrected count is your best estimate of the radiation emitted from the source, and should be used to measure its half-life

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[lxna]

Thank you for this, super clear explanation! :)

[Unknownnpie]

Does questions about half life always include background radiation?