Comment on Happens every time

HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Afaik its always going to have some parts of uranium right? 50% after one half life, 25% after two half lives and it will keep on halving practically forever (or till the last atom decays). In the end it comes down to when you consider it a negligible amount.

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  • JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I mean, yes, that’s how it would work if there were an infinite number of atoms in the piece. There’s a finite amount, though, so eventually there will be a point when all the atoms have completely decayed.

    All models are wrong, but some are useful.

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  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    after a certain point, you’re going to get to where you have to split an atom or two.

    fairly sure that’d be far less exciting than normal.

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    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      half life times log2(amount of atoms), right?

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      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I mean I didn’t get that far, I lost track of how many zeroes were in the half-life.

        (It’s 704ish million, right?)

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  • HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Yeah, thats what I was using to get 14%.

    2billion years is about 2.8 halflives, so I calculated (1/2)^2.8 ~ 0.14.

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  • Hupf@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    xkcd.com/1153/

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