Uranium-234 has a half-life of 246,000 years. How did we measure that if the technology to do that hasn’t been around that long?

Question

Uranium-234 has a half-life of 246,000 years. How did we measure that if the technology to do that hasn’t been around that long?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Math.

Half life can be measured because it follows an exponential decay formula. once you have the rate you can work out the time until half of the units have decayed.

To do this you just measure how much has decayed within the time frame you have measured take several readings and you can plot the graph and extrapolate from there