Half-Life of Radioactive element

A half-life usually describes the decay of discrete entities, such as radioactive atoms. In that case, it does not work to use the definition that states "half-life is the time required for exactly half of the entities to decay". For example, if there is just one radioactive atom, and its half-life is one second, there will not be "half of an atom" left after one second.

An exponential decay can be described by any of the following three equivalent formulas:

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}N(t)&=N_{0}\left({\frac {1}{2}}\right)^{\frac {t}{t_{1/2}}}\\N(t)&=N_{0}e^{-{\frac {t}{\tau }}}\\N(t)&=N_{0}e^{-\lambda t}\end{aligned}}}$

where

• N₀ is the initial quantity of the substance that will decay (this quantity may be measured in grams, moles, number of atoms, etc.),
• N(t) is the quantity that still remains and has not yet decayed after a time t,
• t_1⁄2 is the half-life of the decaying quantity,
• τ is a positive number called the mean lifetime of the decaying quantity,
• λ is a positive number called the decay constant of the decaying quantity.

The three parameters t_1⁄2, τ, and λ are all directly related in the following way:

${\displaystyle t_{1/2}={\frac {\ln(2)}{\lambda }}=\tau \ln(2)}$

where ln(2) is the natural logarithm of 2 (approximately 0.693).

By plugging in and manipulating these relationships, we get all of the following equivalent descriptions of exponential decay, in terms of the half-life:

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}N(t)&=N_{0}\left({\frac {1}{2}}\right)^{\frac {t}{t_{1/2}}}=N_{0}2^{-t/t_{1/2}}\\&=N_{0}e^{-t\ln(2)/t_{1/2}}\\t_{1/2}&={\frac {t}{\log _{2}(N_{0}/N(t))}}={\frac {t}{\log _{2}(N_{0})-\log _{2}(N(t))}}\\&={\frac {1}{\log _{2^{t}}(N_{0})-\log _{2^{t}}(N(t))}}={\frac {t\ln(2)}{\ln(N_{0})-\ln(N(t))}}\end{aligned}}}$

Regardless of how it's written, we can plug into the formula to get

• ${\displaystyle N(0)=N_{0}}$ as expected (this is the definition of "initial quantity")
• ${\displaystyle N\left(t_{1/2}\right)={\frac {1}{2}}N_{0}}$ as expected (this is the definition of half-life)
• ${\displaystyle \lim _{t\to \infty }N(t)=0}$; i.e., amount approaches zero as t approaches infinity as expected (the longer we wait, the less remains).

Decay by two or more processes

Some quantities decay by two exponential-decay processes simultaneously. In this case, the actual half-life T_1⁄2 can be related to the half-lives t₁ and t₂ that the quantity would have if each of the decay processes acted in isolation:

${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{T_{1/2}}}={\frac {1}{t_{1}}}+{\frac {1}{t_{2}}}}$

For three or more processes, the analogous formula is:

${\displaystyle {\frac {1}{T_{1/2}}}={\frac {1}{t_{1}}}+{\frac {1}{t_{2}}}+{\frac {1}{t_{3}}}+\cdots }$

For a proof of these formulas, see Exponential decay § Decay by two or more processes