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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is the radioactive decay dice experiment inaccurate?
« on: 01/03/2018 11:01:39 »
It's not the 1/6, you could do it with 1/12 sided dice and get same problem.
If I remember correctly you throw lots of dice and count 6s and say that is decay in 1s. It's the 1s that's the problem, during this time the real decay has been going on continuously from time 0.
It's a bit like compound interest in reverse, work it out in 1 year blocks or 1 month blocks and you get different answers.
EDIT: Whoops message collided with Alan's. Different way of calculating the granularity but same result.
If I remember correctly you throw lots of dice and count 6s and say that is decay in 1s. It's the 1s that's the problem, during this time the real decay has been going on continuously from time 0.
It's a bit like compound interest in reverse, work it out in 1 year blocks or 1 month blocks and you get different answers.
EDIT: Whoops message collided with Alan's. Different way of calculating the granularity but same result.
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