Topic
half-life.
mean duration after which a decaying quantity has reached half of its initial value
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About half-life
Half-life 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 radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of 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, an exponential property which increases by a factor of 2 rather than reducing by that factor.
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