Thorium Decay Series: Explaining 4n

Thread starter crees503
Start date Sep 17, 2011
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Decay Series

Sep 17, 2011

crees503

Why is the Thorium decay series called 4n? I've looked it up but the explanation isn't clear

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Sep 17, 2011

mathman

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Thorium-232 and all its daughter nuclides have atomic mass numbers (number of protons plus number of neutrons) which are multiples of 4, i.e. 4n, where n is an integer.

Last edited: Sep 17, 2011

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