If you are referring to a radioactive material, that will depend on the material. Different things have very different half-lives.
About 5700 years. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5700 years, and the question is asking how long for 200 grams to become 100 grams. That is half, so the answer is 5700 years. It will take another 5700 years for the mass to further decay to 50 grams, and another 5700 years to decay to 25 grams.
A half life pertains to the time it takes for exactly half of a substance to disappear. So, if U235 has a half life of 700 million years, it will take 700 million years for half of it to decay. That would leave .5kg or 500g.
1/16th = (1/2) x (1/2) x (1/2) x (1/2) = (1/2)4 = four half-lives = 40 years.
No it does not. There are various types (isotopes) of plutonium. Plutonium 238, the weapons grade material, has a half life of 88 years. Meaning after 88 years half of the material has transforms into another element through radioactive decay. Plutonium-240 has a half life of ~80 Million years. But eventually all types of plutonium will decay into other elements. All radioactive elements will eventually decay into non-radioactive atoms given enough time.
A half-life is the time it takes for half the original quantity of a given radioisotope to decay. If we are given a sample of one kind of radioactive material, the time it takes for half of it to undergo radioactive decay is the half-life of that radioisotope. It's a statistically derived figure, but scientists have arrived at some very accurate figures to denote the half-life of different radioactive isotopes.The half-life of an unstable material is a constant which is characteristic of exponential decay. This follows because at any time in the decay process the number of disintegrations per second is proportional to the number of atoms of the isotope present, and this is generally unaffected by any physical influence on the material.The half life of a radioactive isotope (radioisotope) is the amount of time required before half of the original mass of the isotope has decayed. For example, the radioisotope Uranium-238 i has a half-life of 4.46 billion years, therefore, if you have 100g of uranium-238 today in 4.46 billion years you will only have 50g.Radioactive substances undergoes decaying process by emitting alpha and beta particles from its nuclei of its own atoms. The time required to desintegrate half of the amount of a radioactive substance is its half life.
Tritium is an isotope of Hydrogen. It has one proton and two neutrons. It decays into Helium or He. It takes 12 1/2 years for half of the original amount to decay into helium. It does not decay into magnesium. So the answer to your original question is forever.
It means that you can't predict when an individual atom will decay. If a certain isotope has a half-life of 5000 years, that means that if you have a large number of atoms, half of them will decay after 5000 years. After another 5000 years, half of what is left will decay - only 1/4 of the original amount is left. For an individual atom, in the above example, there is a probability of 50% of decaying within 5000 years, a probability of 75% of decaying within 10,000 years, etc.
The time depends on the isotope. The half life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years. The half life is the amount of time during which any given atom of the isotope has a 50% chance of undergoing decay. Seen another way, the half life is the time it takes for half the atoms of an isotope in a mass of that isotope to undergo decay.
For plutonium (or any other radionuclide) to decay to one eighth of its original activity, it will take 3 half-lives of the material. In one half-life, half is gone. Half will be left. In another half-life, half of the half that was left is gone, and one quarter will be left. In a third half-life, half the one quarter will be left, and that's one eighth of the original. In the case of plutonium, there are a number of isotopes of this highly radioactive stuff. The isotope 239Pu, which is commonly used in nuclear weapons, has a half-life of 2.41 x 104 years. That's 24,100 years. For 239Pu to decay to 1/8 th of its original amount, it will take 3 time the half-life, which is 7.23 x 104 years, or 72,300 years. And yes, that is a long time. A very long time....
Carbon has a half life of 5730 years. That means that after 5730 years there'll only be half the amount left. After about 11500 there will be a quarter of the original. After 75000 years there will be about 0.0001 of the original sample which is too small to date accurately?
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The decay rate of atoms is typically quantified by a half-life, which is the time it takes for half of the original atoms to decay. If we assume a constant decay rate, we can estimate that it takes approximately 3 half-lives for 75 of the original 100 silver atoms to decay. If the half-life of the silver isotope is 1 hour, then it would take approximately 3 hours for 75 of the atoms to decay.
About 5700 years. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5700 years, and the question is asking how long for 200 grams to become 100 grams. That is half, so the answer is 5700 years. It will take another 5700 years for the mass to further decay to 50 grams, and another 5700 years to decay to 25 grams.
The Years of Decay was created on 1989-10-13.
A half life pertains to the time it takes for exactly half of a substance to disappear. So, if U235 has a half life of 700 million years, it will take 700 million years for half of it to decay. That would leave .5kg or 500g.
The half-life of Carbon-14 is 5,730 years. As such for the carbon-14 to decay from 100% to 12.5% it would take three times the half-life of the material.100% (1st half life decay period) 50% (2nd half life decay period) 25% (3rd half life decay period) 12.5%.Therefore = 5730 x 3 = 17,190 years.
1/16th = (1/2) x (1/2) x (1/2) x (1/2) = (1/2)4 = four half-lives = 40 years.