methods and can be measured only by instruments that are
designed to count nuclear radiations.

For example,

the

amount of gr90 that has fallen out of the stratosphere

and onto the continental United States has been less than
@ pound and a half or approximately one gram per 5,000

square miles (calculated on the basis of 30 millicuries
per square mile and 5 x 106 square miles in the continental

United States).
be found,

Sr?° from this pound and a half source can

by radiological methods,

in milk,

wheat,

bone samples collected throughout the nation,

plant and

but the amount

in any one sample is too small to be weighed even by the
most sensitive balance.
In biological work,

a curie is often too large an

amount of radioactivity to be expressed simply,

so the

unit of radioactivity is often expressed as a fraction of

a curie, e. g., a millicurie (mc), one one-thousandth of a
curle;

or a microcurie

(uc),

one one-millionth of a curie;

or even a micro-microcurie (wuc),

which ig equal to 2.2

disintegrations per minute.

The curie is the rate at which energy is being
released from nuclei of atoms regardless of whether the
energy is being released as alpha or beta particles,

gamma

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