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Radioactive Decay

Part 3: The Half-Life

  1. Use your model function from Part 2 to estimate the half-life T1/2 of the radioactive substance studied by Meyer and von Schweidler. (For simplicity of notation, we will refer to this quantity as T.) Discuss the reasonableness of your answer in light of the data. How many halvings take place in the time frame of the observations?

  2. Explain why another way to write the same model function is

    y = y0 2-t/T.

    That is, decay functions can be expressed as exponentials with base 2 by scaling time by the half-life.

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Last modified: September 16, 1997