When the potassium-40 atoms undergo radioactive decay, they release a ton of energy! There are a couple different types of radioactive decay that can happen, but on average, each potassium-40 atom releases about 1.326 MeV (or 2.125 -13 joules) when it decays. But a tiny fraction (0.012%) is potassium-40, which is radioactive and decays into other more stable elements over time. Most of it is potassium-39 and potassium-41, which are stable. And more specifically, that potassium naturally contains a few different isotopes. As you note, the reason why bananas are radioactive is because they contain potassium. Let’s try a slightly different approach and see how it compares to your answer. Also, while there’s nothing wrong with using kilowatt-hours per month, it makes the math easier if you just convert this to watts or kilowatts (893kwh/month = 1.22kilowatts). For the 0.1 microsieverts you referenced, this is also the total radiation dose for an adult human over a span of 50 years (assuming the potassium stays in their system that long), which further complicates things and isn’t necessarily accurate. The unit is normalized by the mass of the person eating the banana and isn’t quite related to the true amount of absorbed radiation, which makes it difficult to convert to something like power output.
Sieverts measure dosage of radiation, or how much energy your body absorbs from the banana’s radioactive decay while you eat it. As you point out, the conversion from sievert to joules is pretty iffy. Thank you :)įirst off, I love this question! Your approach is quite logical, although there are a few notes that may improve the accuracy. It's probably wrong (the joule to sievert conversion is really iffy). (That's a lot of bananas)Thank you for reading this calculation. Therefore we just have to convert 893 KWH into its equivalent in microsieverts, multiply by 10, and get the amount of bananas required to power the average American house for a month.Ĩ93 KWH = 3.6 6 joules, one sievert is equal to 1 joule of energy, therefore we require 3.6 6 sieverts, which is 3.6 12 microsieverts, multiply by ten is 3.6 13 microsieverts, which means that it takes 3.6 13 bananas to power the average American household for a month.
According to the US department of energy the average American household uses 893 KWH a month. Of course the next logical step is to ask the question, how many bananas do I need to power my house? We start by getting two values, the radiation energy emitted by a banana and the amount of electricity the average American house needs. Thank you! So I've heard that bananas have tiny amounts of radiation in them, due to potassium, and if you eat too many bananas you can die of radiation poisoning. I will appreciate it if someone looks over the following calculation.
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