What are the rules and who decides which radionuclide is going to decay to daughter and which one is going to remain behind?
It looks like half of the parent radionuclides sacrifice themselves for unknown reason!!!
Radioactive decay half lives are a statistical characteristic as a result of quantum mechanical probabilities for changes of one nucleus into another. Which particular (unstable) nucleus will decay in a given interval of time cannt be predicted though.
This particular question was already on the "screen" of research gate about a year ago.
Anyhow, the decay of an atom is a probablistic evet. i.e. The probability that a bulk of many nuclei will suffer an event of X decays in the next time interval (say a second) is a fixed number that is related to its decay constant. Therfore only part do decay in that interval while the others wait for their turn. the way to say that in a mathemtical way is that the derivative of the number of nucley (i.e. the number of decays) is proportional to the number of nuclei present. The proportionality factor is called the decay constant. It is an easy to mathematical procedure to show that the deacy of 50% of the nuclei (the half life) is equal to ln(2)/(decay constant).
See
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Consider_radioactive_atoms_every_one_is_unstable_so_why_do_some_atoms_decay_and_others_dont_before_half_life
Its like that, to make a substance radioactive, we bombard it with neutrons. But it is not predictable that which one nucleus will be hit by neutron first and will be radioactive. So it is also unpredictable that which nucleus will be decay first!
It is a simple statistical property. The number of decaying nuclei during a certain fixed time is directly proportional to the number of nuclei in the sample. The larger is the number of nuclei in the sample the larger is the number nuclei that will "die" during a certain fixed time. This is what we should expect if there are no external forces that can speed up or slow down the decay. There is nothing magic about it.
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