Radioactivity converter
Convert between becquerels and curies: how many atoms decay each second, as opposed to the dose a person receives.
That's 3,333× as active as a smoke detector, while a medical injection is 5× higher. That is 100,000,000 atoms decaying every second.
What it means
How active is that?
Activity counts decays; it says nothing about the dose received, which depends on the radiation type and distance.
Every unit
Your activity in every unit
Learn
Three things worth knowing
-
1 Ci = 37 GBq
A millicurie is 37 MBq, the usual scale for a nuclear medicine injection. The becquerel is small enough that a banana registers 15.
-
A gram of radium
The curie was defined by the activity of one gram of radium-226, measured by Marie and Pierre Curie. The becquerel replaced it with one decay per second.
-
Activity is not dose
A becquerel says how often atoms decay, not how much energy your body absorbs. For harm you need sieverts, which depend on what the radiation hits.
Shortcuts
Popular activity conversions
Background
About radioactivity units
One becquerel is one atomic decay per second: a tiny amount. The older curie was the activity of a gram of radium, 37 billion becquerels, which is why medical sources are quoted in millicuries.