Radioactive decay can be thought of as an exercise in probability theory Imagine that you have a collection of radioactive nuclei at some initial time (N 0 ) and are interested in how many nuclei will still remain at a later time (N) For first order radioactive decay, N N 0 e kt In this expression,...

Radioactive decay can be thought of as an exercise in probability theory. Imagine that you have a

Question:

Radioactive decay can be thought of as an exercise in probability theory. Imagine that you have a collection of radioactive nuclei at some initial time (N₀) and are interested in how many nuclei will still remain at a later time (N). For first-order radioactive decay, N/N₀ = e^−kt. In this expression, k is known as the decay constant and t is time.

a. What is the variable of interest in describing the probability distribution?

b. At what time will the probability of nuclei undergoing radioactive decay be 0.50?

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