Half-Life (Oxford AQA IGCSE Physics)

Revision Note

Half-Life

  • It is impossible to know when a particular unstable nucleus will decay

  • With a large enough sample of unstable nuclei, it becomes possible to predict how many unstable nuclei will undergo radioactive decay

  • The half-life of a radioactive isotope is defined as:

The average time it takes for the number of nuclei of a sample of radioactive isotopes to decrease by half

  • In other words, half-life is the time it takes for the count rate of a sample to fall to half its original level

  • Different isotopes have different half-lives and half-lives can vary from a fraction of a second to billions of years in length

Using half-life

  • Scientists can measure the half-lives of different isotopes accurately:

  • Uranium-235 has a half-life of 704 million years

    • This means it would take 704 million years for the count rate of a uranium-235 sample to decrease to half its original amount

  • Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5700 years

    • So after 5700 years, there would be 50% of the original amount of carbon-14 remaining

    • After two half-lives, or 11 400 years, there would be just 25% of the carbon-14 remaining

  • With each half-life, the number of nuclei of the original element remaining decreases by half

  • Remember that when the nuclei decay, they become another element, they do not disappear

  • For this reason, the mass of the sample does not significantly change

Graph of count rate against time

Half-life Graph, for IGCSE & GCSE Physics revision notes
The diagram shows how the count rate of a radioactive sample changes over time. Each time the count rate halves, another half-life has passed
  • The time it takes for the count rate of the sample to decrease from 100 % to 50 % is the half-life

  • It is the same length of time as it would take to decrease from 50 % activity to 25 % activity

  • The half-life is constant for a particular isotope

Calculating half-Life

  • To calculate the half-life of a sample, the procedure is:

    • Measure the initial count rate of the sample

    • Measure how the count rate changes with time

  • The time taken for the count rate to decrease to half its original value is the half-life

Worked Example

The radioisotope technetium is used extensively in medicine. The graph below shows how the count rate of a sample varies with time.

Worked example using a half-life curve. The curve shows that the initial count rate is 800 counts per minute. After 6 hours, the count rate has fallen to 400 counts per minute and after 12 hours, the count rate has fallen to 200 counts per minute

Determine the half-life of this material.

Answer:

Step 1: Draw lines on the graph to determine the time it takes for technetium to drop to half of its original count rate

Annotated decay curve showing a line drawn from the point when the activity had halved to the curve, then down to the time axis. The half life is shown to be 6 hours.

Step 2: Read the half-life from the graph

  • In the diagram above the initial count rate is 800 counts per minute

  • The time taken to decrease to 400 counts per minute is 6 hours

  • The time taken to decrease to 200 counts per minute is 6 more hours

  • The time taken to decrease to 100 counts per minute is 6 more hours

  • Therefore, the half-life of this isotope is 6 hours

Worked Example

A particular radioactive sample contains 2 million un-decayed atoms. After a year, there is only 500 000 atoms left un-decayed. What is the half-life of this material?

Answer:

Step 1: Calculate how many times the number of un-decayed atoms has halved

  • There were 2 000 000 atoms to start with

  • 1 000 000 atoms would remain after 1 half-life

  • 500 000 atoms would remain after 2 half-lives

  • Therefore, the sample has undergone 2 half-lives

Step 2: Divide the time period by the number of half-lives

  • The time period is a year

  • The number of half-lives is 2

  • 1 year divided by 2 is half a year or 6 months

  • Therefore, the half-life is 6 months

Examiner Tip

You can use models to demonstrate the random process of radioactive decay.

Imagine rolling a dice and hoping to roll a six. Each time you roll the dice, you cannot know what the result will be, but you know there is a 1/6 probability that it will be a six. If you rolled the dice 1000 times, you can expect to roll a '6' around 1000 ÷ 6 ≈ 127 times

Another common model is to use the flip of a coin to model radioactive decay. For each coin, the probability of a landing 'heads' is 1/2, but we still cannot predict the outcome or confidently say when a 'heads' will appear, this is why it's important to use a very large sample of coins (or dice!) to represent the process of radioactive decay.

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