The Half-Life Calculator is used to calculate the half-life in exponential decay.
Half-life is the period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. It is usually used to describe quantities undergoing exponential decay (for example, radioactive decay) where the half-life is constant over the whole life of the decay, and is a characteristic unit (a natural unit of scale) for the exponential decay equation. However, a half-life can also be defined for non-exponential decay processes, although in these cases the half-life varies throughout the decay process.
The calculation of half-life used in this tool is based on the exponential decay equation.
An exponential decay process can be described by the following formula:
N(t) = the quantity that still remains and has not yet decayed after a time t
N0 = the initial quantity of the substance that will decay
t1/2 = the half-life of the decaying quantity