Half Life 2 Substance
Atomic Timeline 1895-1960 | It's a Question of Physics | What is My Annual Radiation Dose? | About The Exhibit |
Half-LifeThe half-life of a radioactive substance is a characteristic constant. It measures the time it takes for a given amount of the substance to become reduced by half as a consequence of decay, and therefore, the emission of radiation.Archeologists and geologists use half-life to date the age of organic objects in a process known as carbon dating. During beta decay, carbon 14 becomes nitrogen 14. At the time of death organisms stop producing carbon 14. Since half life is a constant, the ratio of carbon 14 to nitrogen 14 provides a measurement of the age of a sample. In the medical field, the radioactive isotope Cobalt 60 has been used for radiotherapy to shrink tumors that will later be surgically removed, or to destroy cancer cells in inoperable tumors. When it decays to stable nickel, it emits two relatively high-energy gamma rays. Today it is being replaced by electron beam radiation therapy systems. The half-life of isotopes from some sample elements: oxygen 16 – infinite uranium 238 – 4,460,000,000 years uranium 235 – 713,000,000 years carbon 14 – 5,730 years cobalt 60 – 5.27 years silver 94 - .42 seconds | (click for larger image) In the illustration above, 50% of the original mother substance decays into a new daughter substance. After two half-lives, the mother substance will decay another 50%, leaving 25% mother and 75% daughter. A third half-life will leave 12.5% of the mother and 87.5% daughter. In reality, daughter substances can also decay, so the proportions of substance involved will vary. |
I'm trying to run HL2 Substance, an ancient mod I worked on 10 years ago. Something broke it, be it the Orange Box or Steampipe, and it can't be run as it used to. So far, I've tried changing the steamappid to '215' and set the launch options to '-32bit', fruitlessly. The only way to make it work. Half-Life 2 (stylized as HλLF-LIFE 2) is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Valve Corporation.It is the sequel to 1998's Half-Life and was released in November 2004 following a five-year $40 million development. During development, a substantial part of the project was leaked and distributed on the Internet. The game was developed alongside Valve's Steam software.
May 29, 2011 The half-life of a substance undergoing decay is the time it takes for the amount of the substance to decrease by half. It was originally used to describe the decay of radioactive elements like uranium or plutonium, but it can be used for any substance which undergoes decay along a set, or exponential, rate.
« Back to QuestionsLinda Hall Library
5109 Cherry Street
Kansas City, MO 64110
Number of half-lives elapsed | Fraction remaining | Percentage remaining | |
---|---|---|---|
0 | 1⁄1 | 100 | |
1 | 1⁄2 | 50 | |
2 | 1⁄4 | 25 | |
3 | 1⁄8 | 12 | .5 |
4 | 1⁄16 | 6 | .25 |
5 | 1⁄32 | 3 | .125 |
6 | 1⁄64 | 1 | .563 |
7 | 1⁄128 | 0 | .781 |
... | ... | ... | |
n | 1/2n | 100/2n |
Half-life (symbol t1⁄2) is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo, or how long stable atoms survive, radioactive decay. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential or non-exponential decay. For example, the medical sciences refer to the biological half-life of drugs and other chemicals in the human body. The converse of half-life is doubling time.
The original term, half-life period, dating to Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the principle in 1907, was shortened to half-life in the early 1950s.[1] Rutherford applied the principle of a radioactive element's half-life to studies of age determination of rocks by measuring the decay period of radium to lead-206.
Half-life is constant over the lifetime of an exponentially decaying quantity, and it is a characteristic unit for the exponential decay equation. The accompanying table shows the reduction of a quantity as a function of the number of half-lives elapsed.
- 2Formulas for half-life in exponential decay
Probabilistic nature[edit]
A half-life usually describes the decay of discrete entities, such as radioactive atoms. In that case, it does not work to use the definition that states 'half-life is the time required for exactly half of the entities to decay'. For example, if there is just one radioactive atom, and its half-life is one second, there will not be 'half of an atom' left after one second.
Instead, the half-life is defined in terms of probability: 'Half-life is the time required for exactly half of the entities to decay on average'. In other words, the probability of a radioactive atom decaying within its half-life is 50%.
For example, the image on the right is a simulation of many identical atoms undergoing radioactive decay. Note that after one half-life there are not exactly one-half of the atoms remaining, only approximately, because of the random variation in the process. Nevertheless, when there are many identical atoms decaying (right boxes), the law of large numbers suggests that it is a very good approximation to say that half of the atoms remain after one half-life.
There are various simple exercises that demonstrate probabilistic decay, for example involving flipping coins or running a statistical computer program.[2][3][4]
Formulas for half-life in exponential decay[edit]
An exponential decay can be described by any of the following three equivalent formulas:
where
- N0 is the initial quantity of the substance that will decay (this quantity may be measured in grams, moles, number of atoms, etc.),
- N(t) is the quantity that still remains and has not yet decayed after a time t,
- t1⁄2 is the half-life of the decaying quantity,
- τ is a positive number called the mean lifetime of the decaying quantity,
- λ is a positive number called the decay constant of the decaying quantity.
The three parameters t1⁄2, τ, and λ are all directly related in the following way:
where ln(2) is the natural logarithm of 2 (approximately 0.693).
Decay by two or more processes[edit]
Some quantities decay by two exponential-decay processes simultaneously. In this case, the actual half-life T1⁄2 can be related to the half-lives t1 and t2 that the quantity would have if each of the decay processes acted in isolation:
For three or more processes, the analogous formula is:
For a proof of these formulas, see Exponential decay § Decay by two or more processes.
Examples[edit]
Half Life 2 For Free
There is a half-life describing any exponential-decay process. For example:
- As noted above, in radioactive decay the half-life is the length of time after which there is a 50% chance that an atom will have undergone nuclear decay. It varies depending on the atom type and isotope, and is usually determined experimentally. See List of nuclides.
- The current flowing through an RC circuit or RL circuit decays with a half-life of ln(2)RC or ln(2)L/R, respectively. For this example the term half time tends to be used, rather than 'half life', but they mean the same thing.
- In a chemical reaction, the half-life of a species is the time it takes for the concentration of that substance to fall to half of its initial value. In a first-order reaction the half-life of the reactant is ln(2)/λ, where λ is the reaction rate constant.
In non-exponential decay[edit]
The term 'half-life' is almost exclusively used for decay processes that are exponential (such as radioactive decay or the other examples above), or approximately exponential (such as biological half-life discussed below). In a decay process that is not even close to exponential, the half-life will change dramatically while the decay is happening. In this situation it is generally uncommon to talk about half-life in the first place, but sometimes people will describe the decay in terms of its 'first half-life', 'second half-life', etc., where the first half-life is defined as the time required for decay from the initial value to 50%, the second half-life is from 50% to 25%, and so on.[5]
In biology and pharmacology[edit]
A biological half-life or elimination half-life is the time it takes for a substance (drug, radioactive nuclide, or other) to lose one-half of its pharmacologic, physiologic, or radiological activity. In a medical context, the half-life may also describe the time that it takes for the concentration of a substance in blood plasma to reach one-half of its steady-state value (the 'plasma half-life').
The relationship between the biological and plasma half-lives of a substance can be complex, due to factors including accumulation in tissues, active metabolites, and receptor interactions.[6]
While a radioactive isotope decays almost perfectly according to so-called 'first order kinetics' where the rate constant is a fixed number, the elimination of a substance from a living organism usually follows more complex chemical kinetics.
For example, the biological half-life of water in a human being is about 9 to 10 days,[7] though this can be altered by behavior and various other conditions. The biological half-life of caesium in human beings is between one and four months.
The concept of a half-life has also been utilized for pesticides in plants,[8] and certain authors maintain that pesticide risk and impact assessment models rely on and are sensitive to information describing dissipation from plants.[9]
Download Half Life 2
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^John Ayto, 20th Century Words (1989), Cambridge University Press.
- ^Chivers, Sidney (March 16, 2003). 'Re: What happens durring half lifes [sic] when there is only one atom left?'. MADSCI.org.
- ^'Radioactive-Decay Model'. Exploratorium.edu. Retrieved 2012-04-25.
- ^Wallin, John (September 1996). 'Assignment #2: Data, Simulations, and Analytic Science in Decay'. Astro.GLU.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-09-29.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
- ^Jonathan Crowe, Tony Bradshaw (2014). Chemistry for the Biosciences: The Essential Concepts. p. 568. ISBN9780199662883.CS1 maint: Uses authors parameter (link)
- ^Lin VW; Cardenas DD (2003). Spinal cord medicine. Demos Medical Publishing, LLC. p. 251. ISBN978-1-888799-61-3.
- ^Pang, Xiao-Feng (2014). Water: Molecular Structure and Properties. New Jersey: World Scientific. p. 451. ISBN9789814440424.
- ^Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (31 March 2015). 'Tebufenozide in the product Mimic 700 WP Insecticide, Mimic 240 SC Insecticide'. Australian Government. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
- ^Fantke, Peter; Gillespie, Brenda W.; Juraske, Ronnie; Jolliet, Olivier (11 July 2014). 'Estimating Half-Lives for Pesticide Dissipation from Plants'. Environmental Science & Technology. 48 (15): 8588–8602. Bibcode:2014EnST...48.8588F. doi:10.1021/es500434p. PMID24968074.
External links[edit]
Look up half-life in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Half times. |
- Nucleonica.net, Nuclear Science Portal
- Nucleonica.net, wiki: Decay Engine
- Bucknell.edu, System Dynamics – Time Constants
- [1] Researchers Nikhef and UvA measure slowest radioactive decay ever: Xe-124 with 18 billion trillion years.
- Subotex.com, Half-Life elimination of drugs in blood plasma – Simple Charting Tool