Half-Life

Definition

Half-life is the time required for half of a sample of a radioactive substance to disintegrate by radioactive decay or natural processes.

Related terms

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).