Physics: Half-life

Half-life is the time required for the quantity of a radioactive material to be reduced to one-half its original value.

All radionuclides have a particular half-life, some of which a very long, while other are extremely short. For example, uranium-238 has such a long half life, 4.5x10⁹ years, that only a small fraction has decayed since the earth was formed. In contrast, carbon-11 has a half-life of only 20 minutes. Since this nuclide has medical applications, it has to be created where it is being used so that enough will be present to conduct medical studies.

Here is a on-line calculator that will calculate the activity of some radionuclides at some time after it is formed.

http://ehs.ucsc.edu/lab_research_safety/pubs/ram/decay.htm