Tried looking it up and it got complicated real quick.
In: Physics
T=t/n
T is the half life
t is the amount of time that has passed
n is the amount of half lives that have passed
If you take a chunk of pure radioactive material and let it decay for 1 year, then find that 25% of it is has decayed they you know that only half a half life has passed so…
T=1(year)÷.5(half life’s passed)
T=2 years
To calculate uranium you have to use incredibly small number, large samples, and way to count atoms. But it’s doable, and now you can change the equation to t=n•T to find out how old something is.
Lets say you have 1000 pizza in your fridge. And you ear one per day. Now we can say that the half life of pizzas in your fridge is less than 3 years. More or less.
Since this question is being asked I am wondering, why say half life? Why not instead say “the life of uranium is 9 billion years?”
Nuclear decay is a first-order reaction. Viz. The rate of the reaction is directly proportional to the amount of material. When a nucleus decays, it releases decay products and energy particles, and we can count the number of decay particles using a Geiger counter against time.
The real scientific problem here is getting a pure enough sample in the first place i.e. the amount of uranium 238, for example, in a particular sample. That has been solved by clever chemistry and isotope separation.
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