Simple and easy way for students to develop a dynamic model on Excel sheet

Abstract

Abstract Radioactive decay is not only important in the field of radiochemistry but also useful as a teaching material for chemical kinetics. Although differential equations are often used to explain how decay rate changes over time, there are many students even in college or university who are not very good at mathematics and have difficulty in solving differential equations. Those students are expected to appreciate institutive and schematic illustrations using Excel sheets. In this paper, a water and tank model to demonstrate how radionuclides decay and decrease over time is presented as an example of the model that the students can develop or rearrange by themselves. Therefore, only four arithmetical operations were used in the sheet, so that the students can easily grasp the basic concept of a decay curve or radioactive equilibrium even if they do not have great knowledge of differential equations. In addition, only “Record Macro” and built in “Charts” were used on the sheet, and therefore, no knowledge or skill in graphic programming, such as Visual Basic, is needed to make and use the sheet. A brief online survey indicated the model was interesting to high school students. Since Excel is widely used all over the world, the sheets we have developed can be used in many countries without additional expense.