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Exponential decay. A quantity undergoing exponential decay. Larger decay constants make the quantity vanish much more rapidly. This plot shows decay for decay constant (λ) of 25, 5, 1, 1/5, and 1/25 for x from 0 to 5. A quantity is subject to exponential decay if it decreases at a rate proportional to its current value.
Half-life (symbol t½) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential (or, rarely ...
Exponential growth. Exponential growth occurs when the a quantity grows at a rate directly proportional to its present size. For example, when it is 3 times as big as it is now, it will be growing 3 times as fast as it is now. In more technical language, its instantaneous rate of change (that is, the derivative) of a quantity with respect to an ...
In statistics, a power law is a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a relative change in the other quantity proportional to a power of the change, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another. For instance, considering the area of a ...
First order LTI systems are characterized by the differential equation + = where τ represents the exponential decay constant and V is a function of time t = (). The right-hand side is the forcing function f(t) describing an external driving function of time, which can be regarded as the system input, to which V(t) is the response, or system output.
Lotka–Volterra equations. The Lotka–Volterra equations, also known as the Lotka–Volterra predator–prey model, are a pair of first-order nonlinear differential equations, frequently used to describe the dynamics of biological systems in which two species interact, one as a predator and the other as prey. The populations change through ...
Newton's law of cooling. In the study of heat transfer, Newton's law of cooling is a physical law which states that the rate of heat loss of a body is directly proportional to the difference in the temperatures between the body and its environment. The law is frequently qualified to include the condition that the temperature difference is small ...
The doubling time is a characteristic unit (a natural unit of scale) for the exponential growth equation, and its converse for exponential decay is the half-life. As an example, Canada's net population growth was 2.7 percent in the year 2022, dividing 72 by 2.7 gives an approximate doubling time of about 27 years.