iconaINTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES

During this lecture you will see that some nuclei have the tendency to spontaneously transform into other nuclei with a time evolution described by an exponential decay law which depends on the decay constant 𝜆. Radioactive nuclei can generally decay in different ways and into different product nuclei which may be radioactive themselves. These spontaneous transformations are due to a reduction of the energy content of the nuclear system.  

After this lecture you will be able to: 

  • describe the time evolution of the radioactive decay;
  • define the main physical quantities (decay constant, half-life, activity) and their units of measurement;
  • describe the concept of branching and the radioactive decay chains;
  • understand the physical origin of the nucleus instability.