RadToolz Practical Exercise #2 - Solution

RadToolz has a built in function to calculate this very question.

1. How much americium-241 (Am-241) remains in a smoke detector after 10-years?

Here's how we did it using RadToolz in Excel(R):

Given

Isotope is Am-241
Activity is 1 μCi

Calculate

Use the radioactive decay function from RadToolz. Enter the following into an empty cell:

=RadDecay("AM-241","AM-241",1,10,"Y")


The result is 0.98 μCi .  Only a loss of a little over 2% and it's time to get a new smoke detector.