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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 decay. Decrease in value at a rate proportional to the current value. 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 ...
Exponential growth is the inverse of logarithmic growth. Not all cases of growth at an always increasing rate are instances of exponential growth. For example the function grows at an ever increasing rate, but is very remote from growing exponentially. For example, when it grows at 3 times its size, but when it grows at 30% of its size.
In principle a half-life, a third-life, or even a (1/√2)-life, could be used in exactly the same way as half-life; but the mean life and half-life t 1/2 have been adopted as standard times associated with exponential decay. Those parameters can be related to the following time-dependent parameters:
Plateau principle. The plateau principle is a mathematical model or scientific law originally developed to explain the time course of drug action (pharmacokinetics). [1] The principle has wide applicability in pharmacology, physiology, nutrition, biochemistry, and system dynamics. It applies whenever a drug or nutrient is infused or ingested at ...
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.
Particle decay. Spontaneous breakdown of an unstable subatomic particle into other particles. In particle physics, particle decay is the spontaneous process of one unstable subatomic particle transforming into multiple other particles. The particles created in this process (the final state) must each be less massive than the original, although ...
The half-life of a population is the time taken for the population to decline to half its size. We can calculate the half-life of a geometric population using the equation: N t = λ t N 0 by exploiting our knowledge of the fact that the population (N) is half its size (0.5N) after a half-life. [20]