Half-life is the time required for half of a sample of a radioactive substance to disintegrate by radioactive decay or natural processes.
Imagine you have a bag full of popcorn kernels. You start popping them, and every minute, half of the remaining unpopped kernels pop. The time it takes for half the kernels in your bag to pop is like the half-life of a radioactive substance.
Decay Constant: This is the probability per unit time that a nucleus will decay. It's like how likely each popcorn kernel is to pop in our analogy.
Radioactive Decay: This refers to the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. In our analogy, this would be like the popcorn kernel popping.
Isotope: Isotopes are versions of an element with different numbers of neutrons. Think about having bags of different brands of popcorn; they're all still popcorn (or still the same element), but they might pop at slightly different rates (like isotopes can have different half-lives).
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