decay rate
How fast disintegration
Decay rate measures how quickly something diminishes or breaks down over time.
In physics, it quantifies how fast radioactive atoms disintegrate, often expressed as a half-life: The decay rate of carbon-14 makes it useful for dating ancient artifacts.
The term applies more broadly to any measurable decline—population decay rates, signal decay rates, or the decay rate of a trend's popularity.
- radioactive isotopeUnstable atomic form emitting radiation
- nuclear physicsStudy of atomic nuclei
- alpha particleIonizing emission from decay
- carbon datingIsotope-based age measurement
- decompositionBreakdown into simpler parts
diffusion · senescence · activity · apoptosis · probability distribution · thorium · entropy · differential equation · emission · exponential · fission · oxidation · disintegration · uranium · isotope · beta · alpha · plutonium
- decayrot, wilt, crumble, decomposition, fade
- ratesroyalty, per diem, interest rates, exchange rates, percentage
- Physics quantitiesacceleration, amplitude, area, current, distance
- nuclear physicsnuclear energy, fission, nuclear fission, neutron, proton
- particle physicsquark, quarks, lepton, leptons, boson
- asymptoticsorder of magnitude, exponential growth, linear growth, blowup, infinity
stability versus change
decay ratestability
Resistance to displacement
permanence · conservation · stasis · persistence · half-life