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Somebody got the idea of half life wrong.
It is NOT the time at which a decay will happen with a 50% probability. Half life is a chemistry term that relates to rate as opposed to chance.
Half-life is the time required for a system to change equibilrium in such a manner that only half of the concentration of "X" remains in relation to the immediate past concentration.
Rate and half-life are related as follows for nuclear (1st order) systems:
half-life = ln (2) / k
where k = the rate constant of decay
This said, if the half-life of Iodine is say, 5 minutes .. a sample of radioactive Iodine with # molecules = 1 mol initially; at time = 10 minutes we will have 0.25 mol of radioactive nucleii remaining.
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