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Caesium137.9/23/2023 ![]() It can decay into one of 60 (!) different Ba levels, with most decays being to the ground state which has a spin of 7/2. ![]() The half-life is 30 years.Ĭs-139 has a nuclear spin of 7/2. So, a few more states to decay to, but some pretty large spin mismatches on several of them. The other two states have spin 1/2 or 3/2 (the ground state). The majority go through an excited state with spin 11/2. It can decay into 3 different Ba-137 levels, the ground state, and two excited states. Only one state to go to, and a spin mismatch to slow it down.Ĭs-137 has a nuclear spin of 7/2. The half-life of this decay is 2.3 million years. There is only one available Ba-135 level to decay to, and it has a nuclear spin of 3/2. The half-life is 2 years.Ĭs-135 is listed with a nuclear spin of 7/2. The majority of the decays go through an excited state, which also has a nuclear spin of 4. It can decay to any one of 6 possible Ba-134 nuclear energy levels (the ground state and 5 excited states). Going down to page 69, one finds that the Cs-134 nucleus has a spin of 4. Start with Cs-134 (you probably did not know there was a journal called Nuclear Data Sheets). So, let's take a tour of the isotopes, relying mainly on data from nuclear datasheets. What I mean by that is that you are, at a hand-waving level, looking at an initial state (the Cs), final states (Ba in various possible energy levels), and any applicable quantum numbers you would like to try and conserve (like nuclear spin). Now, while details of nuclear decays are not necessarily touched on unless you are in a nuclear physics course, they are at least somewhat analogous to electron or photon decays. As noted in the comments, all of the various Cs isotopes I'll mention decay by emitting a beta, converting the Cs isotope to a Ba isotope. ![]()
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