Radioactive materials experience radioactive decay. This results from the atoms of the material emitting particles as radiation. Over time, this radiation reduces the amount of material that is still present. A common measurement of this phenomenon is deemed "half-life." Half-lives for common materials can be found on Wikipedia.
Create a program that will compute how long some amount of radioactive material will exist. Towards that end, you will:
Define a constant called EPSILON. This constant
will be what is used to determine when the amount of material no
longer exists.
Write a function called compute_duration. This
function will take two parameters: The amount of material in grams,
and the half-life (in seconds) of said material. Your function
should compute (and return) the duration (in seconds) that the
material will continue to exist. Recall that you can multiply the
half-life by the log2(amount / EPSILON) to get how long
until the specified amount decays.
To assist in your computation, you will also need the following functions:
convert_days_to_seconds, which takes a number of
days and returns their duration in seconds.
convert_years_to_seconds, which takes a number of
years and returns their duration in seconds. This function should
use the previous function.
convert_seconds_to_days, which takes a number of
seconds and returns the number of days. This number may be a
floating point number.
convert_seconds_to_years, which takes a number of
seconds and returns the number of years represented by those
seconds. This number may be a floating point number.
Test your functions using known data.
Chernobyl is one of the worst man-made nuclear disasters. The reactor contained (among other chemicals) Iodine-131, which has a half-life of on the order of 8.02 days. Assuming ALL that was released were the 400 kg of iodine, when would Chernobyl have been safe? Print this duration in days and years.
Unfortunately, Iodine was one of the LEAST radioactive materials released by the accident. Caesium-137 was also released, and has a half-life on the order of 30 years. It is estimated that 6 TONS of this radioactive fuel were released. How long would the Caesium-137 persist in Chernobyl? Print this duration in days and years.
Your program should include the traditional header, use appropriate variable names, and nicely label all values printed to the terminal. Submission are to be done through cseval.roanoke.edu through the Assignment 2 link. Both partners must submit through cseval!
Fukushima: In March 2011, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami set off a series of events that led to the nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. It is the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. When will Fukishima become safe? You will have to research the disaster to learn what elements were released (and in what amounts) in order to answer this question.
Japan has earned the right to host the 2020 Olympic games. Using your functions written above, (and potentially newly written ones) how much radioactive material will still exist when the games are held there?
The half-lives of Half-Life: Valve is a video game company who released a game called Half-Life in 1998. In 2004, they released the sequel, Half-Life2. However, by Sept. 2013, Half-Life 3 has yet to be announced. Using this information, can you determine the half-life of Half-Life? Assume the initial amount is the number of copies of the games sold (~20 million) times the weight of a CD (about 20 grams), and that there is none left.
Other interesting computations: A lot of information exists about half-lives. I am not a chemist, however. Perform some computations that seem interesting involving half-lives. Be sure to include comments in your file, describing your computations.