They constantly emit radiation, the half life is basically the time that it takes for the mass to half, this means that it will be emitting whatever time of radiation all of the time, at some point it will be 1/2 of the mass.
They constantly emit radiation, the half life is basically the time that it takes for the mass to half, this means that it will be emitting whatever time of radiation all of the time, at some point it will be 1/2 of the mass.A
Ahhh and so why do we focus on 'half life' or the time it takes for half of the atoms in a radioisotope to decay rather than it's 'full life'?
Ahhh and so why do we focus on 'half life' or the time it takes for half of the atoms in a radioisotope to decay rather than it's 'full life'?
Because the radioactivity will never truly go away, it will go from (e. g.) 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1,0.5,etc... Even if the number is really small it is still there, so the atom never truly stabilizes.
We take it's half life because we can have an idea of how fast it'll decay, this is helpful in medicine, you don't want a chemical decaying for years, you want its radiation to halve as fast as possible so it's less harmful.
Because the radioactivity will never truly go away, it will go from (e. g.) 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1,0.5,etc... Even if the number is really small it is still there, so the atom never truly stabilizes.
We take it's half life because we can have an idea of how fast it'll decay, this is helpful in medicine, you don't want a chemical decaying for years, you want its radiation to halve as fast as possible so it's less harmful.