Thread: Half Lifes

When looking at half-life chains and trying to understand what I half life is I can grasp the concept, but what I want to know is, at the end of one half life does that mean half of the atoms have emitted some form of radioactive emission (alpha, beta or gamma)?

Thanks in advance

Originally Posted by j0hn

When looking at half-life chains and trying to understand what I half life is I can grasp the concept, but what I want to know is, at the end of one half life does that mean half of the atoms have emitted some form of radioactive emission (alpha, beta or gamma)?

Thanks in advance

Pretty much.

At the end of one half-life one half of the nuclei have changed to some other nucleus. Alpha, beta and gamma emissions are the most common, but there are others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay

I see, thank you for your reply (: