What is the reason radioactive decay is measured in half-life’s instead of just using the elements “full-life”?

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Is there something special about the halfway point? Does the decay happen at a steady pace or exponentially?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Half lives only work because of how many atoms there are. If you have one single atom, you have no idea how long it will take to decay, all you know is that after one half.life it has a 50% chance to decay. When you have billions of atoms and you know that any single atom has a 50% chance to decay after one half life, then after one half life half of the atoms should have decayed.

Half lives don’t work by communicating with each other and making sure exactly half of all the atoms decay, it’s just a random chance for each individual atom. It’s a result of statistics, not some special force ensuring this takes place.

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