The starting amount of radioactive iodine-131 was 250 g. The half-life is 8 days. When Leslie measured the amount, she measured 15.625 g of radioactive iodine. How many days have elapsed between measurements? 16 24 32 64

Physics · High School · Tue Nov 03 2020

Answered on

Given the statement:

The starting amount of radioactive iodine-131 was 250 g. The half-life is 8 days. When Leslie measured the amount, she measured 15.625 g of radioactive iodine.

Determine how many days have elapsed between measurement.

Solution:
In order to determine how many days elapsed, we simply needed to divide first 250 by 2 consecutively up until 15.625.

 250/2  = 125
 125/2 = 62.5
 62.5/2 = 31.25
 31.25/2 =15.625

It can be seen that to get 15.625, 250, must be divided 4 times by 2.

This means that we can multiply 4 by 8 in order to determine the number of days that have elapsed.

= (4)(8)

= 32 days

Final answer:

= 32 days