The concept of half-life is difficult to directly show students due to the nature of radioactive materials. Students cannot directly observe and count the decay of individual atom. Flipping copper pennies provides an easy way to model radioactive decay. A tails represents a radioactive atom and heads represents a decayed atom. By simply counting the ratio of heads to tails, students are able to generate fairly accurate half-life decay graph.
Students can draw conclusions about nuclear decay from the graph.
Materials 100 pennies per pair, jar, and tray Graph paper, ruler, etc. Chart of examples of half-lives of different elements . Lesson Plan Suggested opening brainstorming. Put pennies into jar and shake for 15 seconds. The 15 seconds represents ONE half-life.