Half-life

[Rogelio Bazan 1D]

As I am going through Kinetics in the textbook I am still having trouble understanding Half-life. If someone can help me clarify the concepts to Half-life and the equation(s) involved it would be of great help. Thank you.

[aisteles1G]

Half life is referring the time it takes for half of the current sample to die, so its not a set amount of substance that will die since 1/2 of 200 is different than 1/2 of 300 but the time for the half of the material to 'die' is the same regardless of the initial amount so t1/2 (half life) is a constant for a specific substance. Therefore we can use it to figure out the initial or final concentrations.
Use t1/2=Ln(2)/kr for zero order reactions so either find the half life or Kr, then you can plug the kr or t1/2, in for time, into the other equations to get [A], hope this helps!

[MadelynNguyen1F]

These are the equations I found for Half Lives:
For a zero order reaction A products , rate = k:
t½ = [Ao] / 2k
For a first order reaction A products , rate = k[A]:
t½ = 0.693 / k
For a second order reaction 2A products or A + B products (when [A] = [B]), rate = k[A]2:
t½ = 1 / k [Ao]

[Rogelio Bazan 1D]

Thank you so much, this is really helpful. So just to clarify, according to which order reaction we are dealing with we use the corresponding equation.
For example) zero order; rate = k: t½ = [Ao] / 2k, first order; rate = k[A]: t½ = 0.693 / k, second order; rate = k[A]2: t½ = 1 / k [Ao]

[JT Wechsler 2B]

The half life is the amount of time that it takes for half of a sample to die off. This can be taken with respect to radioactive isotopes or even (like in our case) the amount of time for a certain reactant to decrease by half.