Half-life

[Guadalupe T 1E]

Is T always equal to 1/2 or what does it depend on?

[Salman Azfar 1K]

Usually a half life is a time value for how long it takes half of a substance to be converted or something along those lines. Because of that it is pretty much always notated T1/2 but often you need to use multiple half lives to get a smaller amount. Like it I wanted to know the amount of time for something to decay to 1/4 of its original I'd need to cut it in half two times in a row so I would add together two half lives.

[Nicole Anisgard Parra 2H]

It's not that t (the time) itself is necessarily equal to 1/2; the notation simply tells you that you must find the time required for any specified concentration or amount to decrease by half.

[Amanda Wu 2C]

The half life is the time it takes for the concentration of a species to decrease to half its initial concentration. It can be 1/2 (whatever time units is used in a particular case) but the half life itself is not always 1/2. It just means the time it takes for a species' concentration to become 1/2 its initial concentration.

[Guangyu Li 2J]

Half-life usually describes the decay of discrete entities, and it describes the time that a material left only half of its original content. As a result, T does not always equal to 1/2. For example, it can be 1/4 which is the 1/2 of the 1/2 of the original material after two half-life time intervals.