Assignment Week 7

Geochemistry – Radioactivity & Geochronology

Due Date: Week 8
Lecturer: Dyah Nindita Sahdarani, S.Si, M.Energy
Format: A4 paper

Half Life (20 points)

Radioactive strontium-90, 90Sr, has a half-life of 28 years.
a. What fraction of a sample of 90Sr will remain after 3 half-lives?
b. What fraction of a sample of 90Sr will remain after 168 years?

Half Life (20 points)

Calculate the half-life of 87Rb (where λRb = 1.42 x 10-11 year).
What percentage of the 87Rb incorporated in the earth 4.6 x 109 years ago has now decayed to 87Sr?

Rb-Sr decay system (25 points)

The following data were measured on whole rock gneiss samples from the Bighorn Mountains of
Wyoming. Use linear regression to calculate the age and initial 87Sr/86Sr for the gneiss.
87
Sample Code Rb/86Sr 87
Sr/86Sr
A-01 0.1475 0.7073
A-02 0.2231 0.7106
A-03 0.8096 0.7344
A-04 1.1084 0.7456
A-05 1.4995 0.7607
A-06 1.8825 0.7793

Decay process (15 points)

a. Plutonium-239 decays via alpha decay. Write out the decay equation for Plutonium-239!
%&#
#$𝑃𝑢
b. Scandium-46 decays via the beta-minus process. Write out the decay equation for scadium-
46.
$*
%)𝑆𝑐
c. A certain isotope decays via the beta-plus process to neon-22. Write out the complete decay
equation.
%%
)-𝑁𝑒

Parent & daughter nuclides (20 points)

a. Fill in the table below
Number of half- 0 1 2 3 4 5
life
% Parent
Nuclide
% Daughter
Nuclide

b. Using the above chart, estimate the percentage of parent and daughter material that
should be present if 5 half-lives have passed. If the length of the half-life is 1 million
years. How old is the rock?
c. What is the age of a basaltic lava flow which has isotopic abundances D=87.5% and
P=12.5% and isotopic half-life of 10 million years?

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