Question

Americium-241 is widely used in smoke detectors. Calculate theamount of americium-241 consumed in a smoke detector (initiallycontaining 3.10 µg of Am), in micrograms, that has been used for oneyear if the half-life is 433 years..

Answer 1

The half life of a substance is given by the following equation:

In this problem, we can identify the following values:

The amount consumed = 3.10 - 3.09504 = 0.00495852 μg

0.00495852 μg of americium-241 was consumed in a smoke detector.