Since naturally occurring uranium (U-238) has a half life of 4.5 billion years, then it means half of the uranium on earth has decayed into lead by now. But why only half, and why that specific half? What was special about the particles that did decay? Were they different in some way?
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I have 16 coins. I am going to flip all of them. When they come up tails, they die.
Round 1: HTTHHTTTHTHHTHHT (8 died, 8 lived)
Round 2: THHTTTHH (4 died, 4 lived)
Round 3: HTHT (2 died, 2 lived)
Round 4: HT (1 died, 1 lived)
Half life = 1 round
You can do this with other random generators too. For example you could roll 6-sided dice and all the ones that land on a 1 die. Each round 1/6 will die. You can work out that the half life is 2.59 rounds so on average every 2.59 rounds, half the dice will have died.
Radioactive particles are like this, over some time period, some randomly decay. The half-life is the time it takes for half to have randomly die.
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