Americium-241
There are many radioactive isotopes, some have uses like Americium-241. How many people have smoke detectors in their house? Smoke detectors save lives by detecting smoke in houses, an early detection of a fire. How does it work? By seeing the chemical properties of the Americium-241, the machine can emit an alarm warning you there is a fire. We see this through radioactive decay. Radioactive decay is the loss of mass in an isotope after an amount of time. This "amount of time" is called a half-life, this is the time it takes for an isotope to lose half of its mass. By measuring the radioactive decay we can:
- help diagnose deseases
- reduce nuclear radiation
- make smoke detections
What Are you waiting for?! Buy Americium-241 now!
Graph measuring radioactive decay of Thorium-234.