Half Life¶
Half Life, other than being a fantastic game, is the time it takes for a radioactive substance to halve it's radioactivity / for the nuclei in a sample to decay. This can be anything from a few seconds, to billions of years.
Use to calculate radiation level¶
The Half Life of a sample can be used to calculate the radiation level of said sample between two given times.
For example:
An isotope has a half life of 2 hours. It starts with a radiation level of 1600
counts/sec. What will the radiation level be after 6 hours?
First establish how many half-lifes that is: 6 / 2 = 3 half lifes
start 2 hours 4 hours 6 hours
1600 -> 800 -> 400 -> 200 counts/sec
Therefor the radiation level will be 200 counts/sec after 6 hours.
Use radiation level to calculate half life¶
The Half Life of a sample can be established by using two radiation levels and the time between the readings.
For example:
An isotope started with a radiation level of 1600 counts/sec, after 4 hours it had a
radiation level of 400 counts/sec. What is the isotope's half life?
start 1 half life 2 half lifes
1600 -> 800 -> 400
In 4 hours there were 2 half lifes - therefor a half life is 4/2 = 2 hours.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.