Everything Totally Explained


Ask & we'll explain, totally!
Becquerel
Totally Explained


  NEW! All the latest news in the worlds of computer gaming, entertainment, the environment,  
finance, health, politics, science, stocks & shares, technology and much, much, more.  


View this entry using RSS

Everything about The Becquerel totally explained

The becquerel (symbol Bq) is the SI derived unit of radioactivity, defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. It is therefore equivalent to s-1. The becquerel is named for Henri Becquerel, who shared a Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie for their work in discovering radioactivity.
   In a fixed mass of radioactive material, the number of becquerels changes with time. Therefore, a sample radioactive decay rate is always stated with a timestamp for short-lived isotopes, sometimes after adjustment to some specific date of interest (in the past or in the future). For example, one might quote a ten-day adjusted figure, that is, the amount of radioactivity that will still be present ten days in the future. This can de-emphasize short-lived isotopes. SI uses the becquerel rather than the second for the unit of activity measure to avoid dangerous mistakes: a measurement in becquerels is proportional to activity, and thus a more dangerous source of radiation gives a higher reading. A measurement in seconds is inversely proportional. As any SI unit, Bq can be prefixed; commonly used multiples are kBq (kilobecquerel, 103 Bq), MBq (megabecquerel, 106 Bq), and GBq (gigabecquerel, 109 Bq).
   When measuring radioactivity of a sample with a detector, a unit of "counts per second" (cps) or "counts per minute" (cpm) are often used. These units can be converted to the absolute activity of the sample in Bq if one applies a number of significant conversions, for example, for the radiation background, for the detector efficiency, for the counting geometry, for self-absorption of the radiation in the sample.
   The becquerel can be used for the frequency of aperiodic events; for periodic events, the hertz, which is also defined as s–1, is used as unit.

Relationship to the curie

The curie (Ci) is an older, non-SI unit, of radioactivity. It is equivalent to 3.70 × 1010 disintegrations per second, which is approximately the amount of activity produced by 1 g of radium-226. Thus the curie is defined as 3.7×1010 becquerels or 37 GBq.

Definition

1 Bq = 1 s–1Further Information

Get more info on 'Becquerel'.


External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

    <a href="http://becquerel.totallyexplained.com">Becquerel Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
   As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.



Copyright © 2007-8 totallyexplained.com | Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License | Site Map
This article contains text from the Wikipedia article Becquerel (History) and is released under the GFDL | RSS Version