Eli5 : If nothing disappear, what happens to the atoms that disintegrate when their life is done (life span of an atom)
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Sounds like you’re talking about half life, which is a measure of how long (on average) it takes for half of a radioactive material to decay. When atoms decay, all that means is they eject parts of themselves and as a result become different atoms. Only certain bigger elements will decay, which is what makes them radioactive. So no matter or energy gets lost, it’s just redistributed.
To add on to this, atoms don’t have a set lifespan either. A radioactive atom does not “remember” how long it’s existed and then suddenly decay after a certain period. The process of decay is a random event that has a fixed chance of happening at any given point. The lower the chance, the longer it takes, on average. This is why we measure the half life of a material, instead of the full life; because we can estimate with probability how long it will take for half of the atoms to decay, and at our scale that estimate is often really accurate, but it could take eternity for every last atom to decay.
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