The most helpful feature of the radioisotope americium-241 for the smoke detector to work is its Long half-life.
What is Half-Life?
Half-life is the time required for a quantity to reduce by half to its initial value. The half-life of any radioisotope is represented by [tex]t_{1/2}[/tex] .
Americium-241 (²⁴¹Am) is the most common isotope of americium.
Americium-241 has a half-life of 432 years.
Am-241 decays by emitting alpha particles and gamma radiation to become neptunium-237.
Thus, the most helpful feature of the radioisotope americium-241 for the smoke detector to work is its Long half-life.
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Smoke detectors are the safety devices for fire protection that detects smoke and gives alarms as a warning. The long half-life of the radioisotope would be most practical for the detector.
Radioisotopes are chemical substances that have unstable neutrons, protons and some amount of excess energy. They have a half-life which is the time by which they get reduced or decay to half quantity.
Americium-241 is the radioactive isotope of americium and have a half-life of 432.2 years. It helps in the alarm as the smoke particle disrupt the electric current produced by the isotope and results in the warning of the device to go on.
Therefore, option A. long half-life is the feature that would be most useful for the smoke sensor.
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