Geiger–Nuttall law
Ley de Geiger-Nuttall
- Date
- 1911 · confidence medium
- Place
- Manchester, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- John Mitchell Nuttall y Hans Geiger
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Empirical law relating the decay constant of a radioactive isotope to the energy of the alpha particles it emits, formulated by Hans Geiger and John Mitchell Nuttall.
What it led to
- Early understanding of the relationship between decay energy and half-life
- Experimental basis for the later quantum theory of alpha decay (Gamow, 1928)
- Advances in early-20th-century nuclear and particle physics
- Applications in radiometric dating and isotope physics