Curie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Curie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The curie (symbol Ci) is a unit of radioactivity, defined as 1 Ci = 3.71010 decays per second. This is roughly the activity of 1 gram of the radium isotope 226Ra, a substance studied by the pioneers of radiology, Marie and Pierre Curie, for whom the unit was named.[1][2] In addition to the curie activity can be measured using an SI derived unit, the becquerel (Bq), which equates to one decay per second. Therefore: 1 Ci = 3.71010 Bq = 37 GBq (100 mCi = 3.7 GBq) and 1 Bq 2.701011 Ci

A radiotherapy machine may have roughly 1000 Ci of a radioisotope such as cesium-137 or cobalt-60. This quantity of nuclear material can produce serious health effects with only a few minutes of exposure. Also, a commonly-used measure of radioactivity is the microcurie: 1 Ci = 3.7104 disintegrations per second = 2.22106 disintegrations per minute The typical human body contains roughly 0.1 Ci of naturally occurring Potassium-40.

Name
The Curie unit has been in use since c. 1910, named after Pierre Curie (1859-1906), and/or his wife, Marie Curie (1867-1934), the discoverers of Radium and Polonium. [3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie

3/12/2011