Half-Life Flashcards
What is half-life?
The amount of time required for half the nuclei in a sample of radioactive isotope to decay.
What is carbon dating?
The process of determining the age of an object by measuring the amount of carbon-14 remaining in that object.
What can half-life be used for?
It can be used to compare the rate of radioactive decay for an isotope.
The shorter the half-life, the ______ the decay rate.
faster
What is a similar pattern all radioactive decay rates follow?
A decay curve.
What is the difference between different isotopes?
The length of their half-life.
What can a decay curve be used for?
It can be used to estimate the amount of the parent isotope remaining or the amount of daughter isotope produced at any time after the radioactive sample first formed or, in the case of carbon dating, after the organism died.
The half-life for a radioactive element is a ________ ____ of decay.
constant rate.
What else can radioactivity provide?
It can provide a method to determine age of objects by measuring relative amounts of remaining radioactive material to stable products formed, such as the ratio of carbon-14 atoms to carbon-12 atoms.
What is a decay curve?
A curved line on a graph that shows the rate at which radioisotopes decay. It also shows the relationship between half-life and the percentage of the original substance that remains.
How many radioisotopes can be used for dating?
Many (lol there was no point in this question)
What is a parent isotope?
The original, radioactive material.
What is a decay product.
The product of radioactive decay, which may itself decay to produce another decay product or daughter product.
What is a daughter isotope/product? (They’re the same thing.)
The stable product of the radioactive decay.
Does the rate of decay remain constant?
Yes.
