Microbecquerel
| Becquerel | |
|---|---|
| Unit system | SI derived unit |
| Unit of | Radioactivity |
| Symbol | Bq |
| Named after | Henri Becquerel |
| In SI base units | s−1 |
The becquerel (English: /bɛkəˈrɛl/; symbol: Bq) is the SI derived unit of radioactivity. One becquerel is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second. The becquerel is therefore equivalent to an inverse second, s−1. The becquerel is named after Henri Becquerel, who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903 for their work in discovering radioactivity.
As with every International System of Units (SI) unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is uppercase (Bq). However, when an SI unit is spelled out in English, it should always begin with a lowercase letter (becquerel)—except in a situation where any word in that position would be capitalized, such as at the beginning of a sentence or in material using title case.
1 Bq = 1 s−1
A special name was introduced for the reciprocal second (s−1) to represent radioactivity to avoid potentially dangerous mistakes with prefixes. For example, 1 µs−1 could be taken to mean 106 disintegrations per second: 1·(10−6 s)−1 = 106 s−1. Other names considered were hertz (Hz), a special name already in use for the reciprocal second, and fourier (Fr). The hertz is now only used for periodic phenomena. Whereas 1 Hz is 1 cycle per second, 1 Bq is 1 aperiodic radioactivity event per second.
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