Our Year 10 science pupils have been learning about half life. Half life is the time taken for the number of radioactive nuclei in a sample to halve. This is a useful property to know for a radioactive substance as radioactive decay is a completely random process. Many of our Year 10 classes have been using skittles to model radioactive decay. Any skittles that were “S” side up were deemed to have “decayed” into more stable atoms. We plotted some beautiful graphs, worked out the half life of our own “radioactive substances” and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using this model to represent radioactive decay. We all had a sweet time!