On 4/15/2011 10:48, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Are you saying there's some sort of relationship between the halflife of a
> substance and how much radiation it emits?

Well, yeah. By definition, if the half life is a month, it emits half of all 
the radiation it'll ever emit in the first month. If the half life is a 
year, it takes a year to emit the same amount of radiation, so it's 1/12th 
as radioactive.

Indeed, that's exactly why you pile up a bunch of naturally-occurring 
uranium in a reactor. The atoms set each other off much faster than you'd 
get from normal unstimulated half-life decay.  Otherwise there wouldn't be 
any uranium left.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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