Question

if 5 half-lives have gone by and you have .03125 grams of an unstable parent substance, how many grams of stable daughter product should you have?

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation:

The amount of daughter product that should be present after 5 half-lives depends on the specific radioactive decay process involved and the initial amount of the parent substance. In general, after each half-life, the amount of the parent substance decreases by half, and the corresponding amount of the daughter product increases by half.

In this case, with 5 half-lives gone by, the amount of the parent substance should have decreased by a factor of 2^5 = 32. Hence, the amount of the parent substance should be .03125/32 = 0.0009765625 grams.

Since the amount of daughter product is proportional to the amount of the parent substance that decays, the amount of daughter product should be 0.0009765625 * 32 = 0.03125 grams.