What does ‘half life’ actually mean? If the radiation level is always half, then would an atom always be radioactive? Could a plutonium atom decay into another non-radiactive element?
Edit: spelling
In: Physics
If you have an atom that has a 1 second half-life. There is a 50% chance that atom will decay in 1 second.
Basically, half-life is the amount of time you have to wait for there to be a 50% chance of an atom decaying.
It is probabilistic. So if an atom has a half life of 1 second, this does not mean that in 1 second that atom will now be a half atom. Instead, it means that on average, that atom will decay within its 1s half life 50% of the time.
All radioactive material decays into non-radioactive elements, eventually. That’s by definition.
Often there are mid-steps where the radioactive atoms need to decay several times before they reach a stable state with no half-life.
Also as a side note, half-life is a term that can apply to generally anything that can be halved. The medical sector uses half-life a lot to talk about how quickly your body metabolizes certain substances, so if you’re injected with a medicine or a toxin, how long does it take for half of it to go away.
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