You are hired as an expert witness for the defense of an employee who is being sued for exposing his supervisor to harmful radiation. The employee had a PET scan and was injected at 4:30 PM with glucose containing on the order of 1014 atoms of 14O, with a half-life of 70.6 s. Immediately after the scan was completed, at 5:30 PM, the employee met his supervisor for a dinner meeting, shook hands with him, and sat down at the same table for dinner. The supervisor looked shocked when the employee mentioned that he had just had a PET scan before the meeting. Later that evening, the supervisor started feeling ill and became convinced that it was radiation poisoning due to the significant radiation he received during his encounter with the employee. The supervisor quickly filed suit for radiation damage tohis body against the employee based on this conclusion. In order to generate a defense argument for the employee, calculate the activity of the 14O in the employee’s body when the two sat down to have dinner at 5:30.
Radioactive decay
The emission of energy to produce ionizing radiation is known as radioactive decay. Alpha, beta particles, and gamma rays are examples of ionizing radiation that could be released. Radioactive decay happens in radionuclides, which are imbalanced atoms. This periodic table's elements come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Several of these kinds are stable like nitrogen-14, hydrogen-2, and potassium-40, whereas others are not like uranium-238. In nature, one of the most stable phases of an element is usually the most prevalent. Every element, meanwhile, has an unstable state. Unstable variants are radioactive and release ionizing radiation. Certain elements, including uranium, have no stable forms and are constantly radioactive. Radionuclides are elements that release ionizing radiation.
Artificial Radioactivity
The radioactivity can be simply referred to as particle emission from nuclei due to the nuclear instability. There are different types of radiation such as alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Along with these there are different types of decay as well.
You are hired as an expert witness for the defense of an employee who is being sued for exposing his supervisor to harmful
his body against the employee based on this conclusion. In order to generate a defense argument for the employee, calculate the activity of the 14O in the employee’s body when the two sat down to have dinner at 5:30.
Step by step
Solved in 4 steps with 7 images
