Year 12 Physics students are starting the year with Atomic and Nuclear Physics. As part of the topic, students learn about radioactivity and half-life, and how it is used to date ancient artefacts (radioisotope dating). We get students to use M&M's to "demonstrate" how nuclear decay works, and experience producing a decay graph. The M&M's with the M facing down represent the undecayed nuclei (still radioactive) and the M&M's facing up represent nuclei which have decayed (turned into something stable). Students throw the M&M's on their desk to represent one half-life elapsing and record the number of undecayed nuclei (M&M's facing with the M facing downwards) until all the nuclei have decayed (all the M&M's end up with the M facing up). They then produce a graph of undecayed nuclei VS number of half-lives.