We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
The two letters Bq, the SI unit symbol for the becquerel.
Bq is the SI symbol for the becquerel, the derived unit of radioactivity — one nuclear decay per second. It says how much material is decaying, not how much harm it does.
Denotes the becquerel, the SI derived unit of activity of a radionuclide.
Contexts: Mathematics
Counts decays per second and says nothing about biological effect: a becquerel of one isotope and a becquerel of another can carry very different risk, which is why dose is reported separately in sieverts.
Contexts: Mathematics
A capital Latin B — a vertical stem with two stacked bowls on its right — followed by a lower-case q, a round bowl with a straight stroke descending below the line on its right.
One counts decays; the other estimates biological harm. They are not interchangeable and differ by many orders of magnitude.