Radioactivity – Why Radioactive Decay Depends on the Amount of Substance Available

radioactivity

Radioactive decay is an attribute of unstable nucleus. When we represent it in equation, we don't involve any macroscopic attribute of substance.

But still, rate of radioactive decay is proportional to amount of substance available (a macroscopic attribute). Why?

What's really the relation with others when it comes to bleeding out its unstability?

Best Answer

The chance for a fixed nucleus to decay doesn't depend on the number of nuclei. In a fixed amount of time all the nuclei have a certain chance to decay. Increasing the number of nuclei will increase the number of nuclei that decay, but that's really just what you'd expect.

It's like rolling lots dice, the number of dice showing a certain digit will be proportional to the number of dice you roll. Continuing this analogy, say you remove a die if it shows 1. This correspond to a nucleus decaying. Then at first many dice will be removed, but as the number of dice grow smaller so will the number that are removed.