This article was co-authored by Meredith Juncker, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Hannah Madden. Meredith Juncker is a PhD candidate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. Her studies are focused on proteins and neurodegenerative diseases.
There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.
This article has been viewed 1,168,912 times.
The half-life of a substance undergoing decay is the time it takes for the amount of the substance to decrease by half. It was originally used to describe the decay of radioactive elements like uranium or plutonium, but it can be used for any substance which undergoes decay along a set, or exponential, rate. You can calculate the half-life of any substance, given the rate of decay, which is the initial quantity of the substance and the quantity remaining after a measured period of time. [1] X Research source