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The half-life is the time it takes for half of a radioactive sample to decay, and it sets the pace of the whole process through N = N₀ × (½)^(t / t½), where N₀ is the starting amount, t is the elapsed time and t½ is the half-life. After one half-life half the material remains, after two a quarter, after three an eighth, and so on — the amount never quite reaches zero but halves with every t½ that passes. Choose what to solve for: the amount left after a given time, the time needed to fall to a given amount, or the half-life itself inferred from a measured decay.

As a worked example, carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 years, so a sample that starts with 100 units of C-14 falls to 100 × (½)^(2000 / 5730) ≈ 78.5 units after 2,000 years. The calculator also reports the decay constant λ = ln2 / t½ ≈ 0.693 / t½ (the probability a given atom decays per unit time) and the mean lifetime τ = 1 / λ = t½ / ln2, which is about 1.44 half-lives — the average time an individual atom survives — and plots the decay curve.

Because the maths is scale-free, the time and the half-life only need to share the same unit — years, days, seconds or hours — and the initial and remaining amounts can be in grams, atom counts, becquerels or any consistent measure. This makes the tool equally at home with radiocarbon and radiometric dating, medical isotope dosing, nuclear-waste decay planning and any first-order exponential decay, including some drug-elimination and discharge problems that follow the same half-life mathematics.