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-----Original Message-----
From: Ludwik Kowalski [mailto:kowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU]
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2002 4:31 PM
In a tangential remark JohnD wrote (yesterday):
If the decay rate of 16.66% per round is too fast, you
can lower it by various means. You can lower by a
factor of 4 by saying that they only decay if they land
black-spot-up _and_ pointing toward the north side
of the room.
This prompted me to go back and to discover a detail
which becomes important when results of simulations
(for large numbers of atoms) are compared with the
experimentally measured, or theoretically predicted
half-life. Here is a challenge for students asked to
create a simulation program, as that shown at the
end of this message (same as yesterday).
[snip]
Then I used another program to obtain the best exponential fit.
The resulting half-live turned out to be 3.73 units. Ask your
students why this result is not the same as the theoretically
expected T=ln(2)/lambda=4.11 units.