All the atoms of a particular radioactive species have the same probability of disintegrating in a given time, so that an appreciable sample of radioactive material, containing many millions of atoms, always changes or disintegrates at the same rate. This rate at which the material changes is expressed in terms of the half-life, the time required for one half the atoms initially present to disintegrate, which evidently is constant for any particular atomic species. Half-lives of radioactive materials range from fractions of a second for the most unstable to billions of years for those which are only slightly unstable. Often, the daughter nucleus like its radioactive parent is itself radioactive and so on down the line for several successive generations of nuclei until a stable one is finally reached. There are three such families or series comprising all together about forty different radioactive species. The radium series starts from one isotope of uranium, the actinium series from another isotope of uranium, and the thorium series from thorium. The final product of each series, after ten or twelve successive emissions of alpha and beta particles, is a stable isotope of lead.
See also [radioactive decay]?, Beta decay, Alpha decay.
Half-life is also the name of a First person shooter game made by Valve Inc. and published by [Sierra On-line]? in 1998. Has many Mods, the most popular of which is Counter-strike.
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