So, I was told that, while radioactive elements have half lives that have been estimated (i.e. the time it takes for a material to decay to half it’s mass), kt’s not entirely predictable how often particles will decay in a given moment. If all that is true (which it might not be, feel free to correct in replies), is there a chance, if microscopically small, that a uranium rod could just fizzle out of existence in a matter of nanoseconds?
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Yes and that’s exactly what happens – each radionuclide will decay spontaneously on its own with no regard to anything around it.
Half-life is the time taken for half of the sample to decay and is based on the average time that a nucleus will take to decay. Because atoms are so small and light we have huge numbers even in a very small sample which is why they average out to the half-life. If you could isolate a single atom then it would either decay or not at any given time so at some point it will decay. For something like carbon-14 which has a half-life of over 5000 years it either will or it won’t decay every second.
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