Re: If radiation is random, how can 1/2 life be exact?

From: Androcles (androc1es_at_nospamblueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 08/14/04 

Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 20:49:00 GMT

<stephen@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:cf9otm$r10$1@msunews.cl.msu.edu...
| Daniel Weston <daniel009@webtv.net> wrote:
|
| : If the atoms that radiate do in fact radiate randomly, why are not their
| : 1/2 lives random? I cannot think of a model that would account for
| : this. Does anyone have any ideas?
|
| : NOTE: For the purposes of posing the above question, I will arbitrarily
| : define random as something occurring without causality.
|
| Suppose you had 100 six sided dice. You roll the dice and remove
| all the dice that come up as a 1. Repeat. How many rolls on average
| will it take until you only have 50 or fewer dice left? Try it for 1000
dice
| and see what the answer is.
Prob(1) = 1/6, 5* 1000 /6 = 833 remaining after first roll.
833 * 5/6 = 694
694 * 5/6 = 579
579 * 5/6 = 482

 The half life is slightly less that 4 rolls.
401
335
279
233
194 the half life is about 4 rolls
162
135
112
94 the half life is about 4 rolls
78
65
54
45 the half life is about 4 rolls

What was your point?
Androcles

|
| Stephen
|

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