ITU Day 2

Based off the visuals above…

What do you notice ??? What do you wonder???

The Tsar Bomba, tested in 1961, was the most powerful

weapon ever detonated. It was over 3,300 times more
powerful than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima
(think about that for a second). With development of
more advanced weapons, and the instability that exists in
the world today, we need to examine if these weapons
are appropriate for countries to have. Keep in mind, the
Tsar bomba was developed over 50 years ago. We
cannot fathom the devastation that newer nuclear and
hydrogen-bomb weapons can inflict. To try and see the
power, and understand the dangers of such weapons, we
are going to scale the devastation that a bomb like the
Tsar Bomba would cause if dropped on a city such as San
Diego.

Use the information above to draw circles on the map

below that show the different radius’ of damage that
would occur for each level of devastation.
10 Miles

Besides the devastation from the original blast, the

unstable nature of the elements used creates
radioactivity that stays in the area for many years after
the blast. Effects from Uranium-235 (used in the Little
Boy bomb over Hiroshima) include kidney disease, birth
defects, and cancer.

Experiment in Exponential Decay:

The Decay of a Radioactive Nucleus Students are divided
into groups, and each group is given 200 chips (or
counters or coins) with a different design on each side,
perhaps black on one side and white on the other (or
heads on one side, tails on the other). The chips are put
into a shaker box and then spilled out onto the table. Let
the black side (or the tails side) represent the nuclei that
have decayed; discard all the chips that turn up black.
Count the white ones (or heads) remaining, return them
to the shaker, and continue the experiment until almost
all the chips are discarded. Enter data in a table like the
following:

Approximately half the number of chips should be

discarded each time; don’t worry if the actual number is
not exactly half. Graph the data obtained, with "toss" on
the horizontal axis and "number of white chips" on the
vertical axis. Let "start" = 0 on the graph. The curve
should resemble the following:
Each "toss" or shake of the box represents a specific time
period. This time period is called the half-life of the
element. By definition, half-life is the time required for
half a sample of a substance to decay. The half life of
Uranium-235 is 700 million years.

Draw a graph that represents the radioactive decay of U-

235
Let your Y-axis represent the percent of radioactive U-
235 remaining, and your X-axis represent # of years

Do you think that ALL of the radioactivity from Uranium

in Hiroshima can eventually disappear? Why or why not?