The amount of time it takes for an idea or a fashion to lose half of its influential power.
Used in a Sentence
half-life
Definitions, parts of speech, synonyms, and sentence examples for half-life.
Editorial note
That's understandable, since the half-life is usually the only time scale that scientists mention when they're talking about radioactivity.
Examples15
Definitions4
Parts of speech1
Quick take
The amount of time it takes for an idea or a fashion to lose half of its influential power.
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of half-life gathered in one view.
(nuclear physics) The time required for half the nuclei in a sample of an isotope to undergo radioactive decay.
(medicine, pharmacology) The time it takes for a substance (drug, radioactive nuclide, or other) to lose half of its pharmacological, physiologic, or radiological activity.
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for half-life.
noun
The amount of time it takes for an idea or a fashion to lose half of its influential power.
noun
(nuclear physics) The time required for half the nuclei in a sample of an isotope to undergo radioactive decay.
noun
(medicine, pharmacology) The time it takes for a substance (drug, radioactive nuclide, or other) to lose half of its pharmacological, physiologic, or radiological activity.
noun
(physical chemistry) In a chemical reaction, the time required for the concentration of a reactant to fall from a chosen value to half that value.
Example sentences
That's understandable, since the half-life is usually the only time scale that scientists mention when they're talking about radioactivity.
Many people seem to assume that a half-life is how long it takes for a radioactive substance to become safe.
You run into the same problem you did with methadone: you're on an opioid that has a 16-27 day half-life.
At a 30 year half-life, that's one decay event per 70 liters per hour.
Otherwise it's poison as any other (and most radioactive isotopes with long half-life are primarily chemically poisonous with the radiation hazard being mostly insignificant).
One of mine is, oddly enough, the buzzsaws from Half-Life 2.
Social sites has made topical news have a really short half-life.
I'm going to leave out web application vulnerabilities, because the vulnerability half-life, method of discovery and supply/demand on those is entirely different.
Long ago, a man who had been programming for 30 years told me about his theory of the half-life of programming knowledge being roughly 18 months.
Unknown Worlds only released the source code for the NS1 mod for Half-Life--and as Valve has yet to release the Gold Src source code, that's of questionable utility.
The combination of science and the occult in the story reminds me in weird ways of Half-Life/Portal, The Manhattan Projects (the graphic novels), and even the real-world Jack Parsons.
Also Half-Life, which I believe Sierra published.
Quote examples
I think the fact that information is readily available contributes to the accelerated "half-life" of "news" more so than design.
We'll assume that's where the article got "1,500 years", yet that being just one half-life the "..or more" isn't so much an option as a certainty.
Proper noun examples
'98 was the year of games like Dune 2000, Thief, Half-life, Fallout 2, RE2, Starcraft, etc yet someone out there was making a 16-bit FPS for a console released nine years prior?
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use half-life in a sentence?
That's understandable, since the half-life is usually the only time scale that scientists mention when they're talking about radioactivity.
What does half-life mean?
The amount of time it takes for an idea or a fashion to lose half of its influential power.
What part of speech is half-life?
half-life is commonly used as noun.