Examining the Decay Constants of Radioactive Dice Experiment

B. Kunwar and P. Chettri

1 .Department of Physics, Sikkim Government College, Tadong, Sikkim-737102, India. 2 Department of Physics, Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, Majhitar, Sikkim-737136, India.

Radioactive dice experiment is widely used as a pedagogical tool to demonstrate the phenomenology of radioactivity in classrooms. The decay constants obtained in such experiments are found to be consistently higher than the values predicted by the exponential nuclear decay law. It was suggested by some authors that the discrepancy could be minimized by using polyhedral dice having higher number of faces. In this article, some analytical attempts have been made to look for better numerical formulae which could minimize the discrepancy between the probabilistic prediction for dice experiment and the predictions based on exponential nuclear decay law. It was observed that the probabilistic prediction closely approaches the prediction based on exponential nuclear decay law under two different conditions: (i) when the data corresponding to a large number of throws are used, and (ii) when polyhedral dice having higher number of faces are used. Comparatively, the prediction based on the first condition yield better results than the second one.