PHYS114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Exponential Decay, Beta Decay, Cosmic Ray
25 Dec 2018
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Some rules to remember when it comes to decay: If an isotope has too many protons it will decay via + decay or alpha decay. If the isotope has too many protons you"ll mostly see decay. Neutron emission only occurs with very light isotopes. The stablest isotopes tend to have a higher proportion of neutrons in their nucleus (114 is the magic atomic number) Remember that the concept of half-life is just an approximation . An isotope"s half-life is the amount of time in which it is most likely that 50% of the substance would have undergone decay. The above formula is the law of exponential decay . If graphed, you would see an exponential decrease in the proportion of parent isotopes in a sample. Remember that different isotopes have different half-lives, some take microseconds to decay and others take billions of years, but either way, they all follow the same law of decay.
