joey401 wrote: "On ch. 30, problem28, with decay of alpha particle, we come up with answer of 6.114366. you posted an answer of 612 MeV. We did the same math you did, is it a typo?"

Hi joey401, instead of doing the calculation again, I looked up the information on the Chart of Nuclides from the National Nuclear Data Center: http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/. It's a treasure trove of info. Starting here: http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/reCenter.jsp?z=84&n=134 I clicked on "decay radiation" near the bottom after the table of info to get decay radiation info about Polonium 218. The final link is:
http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/decaysearchdirect.jsp?nuc=218PO&unc=nds which gives the alpha decay radiation is 6114.68 keV for the Q value, which is 612 MeV barring I suppose a minor rounding error on my part. I've recorded some YouTube videos about this chart: http://c21.phas.ubc.ca/article/why-cant-you-just-turn-nuclear-reactor if you'd like to know more information about it, since it shows really interesting trends for nuclear physics, in the same way that the Periodic Table of Elements exposes trends for chemistry.

Cheers!
Shaun