Half-Life Three Half-Lives

Radioactive Decay of Potassium-40 Half-life 1 Half-life 2 Half-life 3 Figure 20-3 (billions of years) HALF-LIFE Different radioactive isotopes decay at different rates. Elements with short half-lives are used to date very recent fossils. Elements with long half-lives are used to date older fossils. For a 100-meter dash, a coach depends on the second hand of a stopwatch. To time a marathon, the hour and minute hands are more useful. An isotope known as carbon-14, which has a half-life of roughly 5700 years, is useful for directly dating recent fossils.

A textbook page shows a graph of radioactive decay with three marked half-lives, while a Half-Life video game image is pasted over the bottom of the chart. The joke treats the graph’s “Half-life 1,” “Half-life 2,” and “Half-life 3” as references to the three Half-Life games, using the scientific term as an accidental game-series pun.

• @pokupkabitka / 36547 2024-03-02