Lecture 3
Radioactivity
 

Half Life

  • As pointed out earlier, the life of a radioactive isotope is technically infinite. Hence a half life is defined for every radioactive isotope
            
   
  • We can now rewrite the radioactive decay law as
            In 5 halflives, In 10 halflives
  • Thus in about 10 half lifes the population is reduced by about 1000 times.