468,409 views
23 votes
23 votes
What is the significance of the half-life of a radioisotope?

A. It tells how long a radioisotope sample is considered dangerous.
B. It tells what kind of radioactivity is released through radioactive
decay.
C. It tells how much energy is released over the lifetime of a
radioactive sample.
D. It tells what fraction of a radioactive sample remains after a
certain length of time.

User Louis Cremen
by
3.3k points

1 Answer

10 votes
10 votes

The significance of the half-life of a radioisotope tells what fraction of a radioactive sample remains after a certain length of time (option D)

How to determine the significance of the half-life of a material?

The half-life a radioactive substance is the time taken for half the radioactive substance to decay.

This implies that the half-life will tell how much of the radioactive substance will remain over a given time frame

Now lets take a look at the options given from the question. These are highlighted below:

A. It tells how long a radioisotope sample is considered dangerous.

B. It tells what kind of radioactivity is released through radioactive

decay.

C. It tells how much energy is released over the lifetime of a

radioactive sample.

D. It tells what fraction of a radioactive sample remains after a

certain length of time.

We can see that only option D correspond to the definition of half-life

Thus, we can conclude that the correct answer is option D

User Geekingreen
by
2.5k points