Procedure

This is actually really neat. Does your calculator have a random number
generator and a looping capability? If so, try the following. Fill a
vector of length 10000 in the following way:

ILOOP1=0                                       !Start with 0 data points
loop 10000 times from here to the point END1   !want 10000 data points
ILOOP1 = ILOOP1 + 1                            !Which data point
   
 ILOOP2 = 0                                    !Start with 0 steps
 loop 10000000 times from here to END2         !So many steps = success
 ILOOP2 = ILOOP2 +1                                 !# of steps so far
 Generate a random number in the range from 0 to 1  !decay or not?  
  If that number is less than 0.001                 ! if we decay
  set VECTOR(ILOOP1) = ILOOP2                       ! count steps
  and go to END1                                    ! start steps again*  
 END2
END1 

*starting steps again means that the decays are independent

Then you make a frequency histogram of VECTOR just like we did for the
muon times.

Results

Click here to get the raw data output from this program. (I chose to try fortran, but almost any language should work)

Below I plotted up the data and did an exponential fit to it. If you integrate the function and divide by the width of each bin (1/60) you get 10000. These are your 10000 trials from loop1.

The manager of this html can be reached via e-mail at <wjohns@fnal.gov>. This page was last updated 03/06/02.