What are the respective decay products of uranium potassium and rubidium?

Answer 1

There are 26 different isotopes of uranium, each with its own method of decaying.

If we stick to the commonest isotopes, however, we are dealing with three naturally occurring isotopes, 234U, 235U, and 238U, one more that exists in nature only in trace amounts, 236U, and two that are synthetic but have relatively long half lives, 232U and 233U. All of these can decay by alpha emission, and all can decay by spontaneous fission. In addition 238U can decay by double beta emission.

In an the case of alpha emission, the daughter atom is Thorium, with an isotope number four lower than that of the parent atom. The other main product of decay is an alpha particle, which is essentially a helium ion moving very fast.

In the case of double beta emission, two neutrinos are emitted, two electrons are captured, converting two neutrons to protons, and 238Pu is the daughter isotope. This decay is very rare.

The case of fission is rather unpredictable. There are two daughter atoms, and neutrons are emitted. The sum of the isotope numbers of the daughter atoms and the number of neutrons equals the isotope number of the parent. Some of the mass of the parent is also converted to heat. The daughter atoms are each very roughly half the mass of the parent. Since the parent is neutron rich, it is inevitable that the daughters will also be neutron rich, and this means the daughter atoms will be radiologically very unstable. More than half the products of fission of 235U have half lives of less than one year, and only 19.5% have half lives of over 100 years (though all of these have half lives of over 200,000 years).

Answer 2

The first decay products of uranium isotopes are thorium isotopes.

The first decay products of potassium-40 are argon-40 and calcium-40.

The first decay product of rubidium-87 is strontium-87.

Answer 3

There is no single decay product for each of them. For a start, each of these has several isotopes - and each radioactive isotope decays in a different way. For example, the only thing an atom of uranium-235 and an atom of uranium-238 have in common is the number of protons. However, the different number of neutrons make them quite different, from the point of view of particle physics.

Answer 4

The decay products of uranium can include thorium, radium, and radon. For potassium, the decay products can include argon and calcium. Finally, the decay products of rubidium can include strontium and a beta particle.