Radioactive Decay Calculator

A small C++17 CLI app that looks up nuclear half-lives by proton number (Z) and neutron number (N), simulates exponential decay N(t), and plots the result using Matplotlib via matplotlibcpp.

Features

• Reads half-life data from a CSV with columns: z,n,halflife(Seconds).
• Treats -1 half-life as stable or not available.
• Prompts for Z, N, initial nuclei count, and total time (seconds).
• Prints remaining nuclei after the given time.
• Plots N(t) and can save it as decay.png.

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Prerequisites

• Linux with a C++17 compiler (GCC/Clang) and CMake (3.28+ as set in CMakeLists.txt).
• Python 3.x with development headers (libpython) available to the compiler/linker.
• Python packages in the same environment:
  • NumPy
  • Matplotlib

The project uses CMake’s FindPython3 and FindNumPy. If NumPy headers are not detected automatically, CMakeLists.txt currently contains a hard-coded NumPy include path you may need to update for your system or remove if discovery works automatically.

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Build

From the project root (Redioactive_Decay_Calculator/):

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j

This produces the executable:

• build/Radioactive_deacy_calculator

Run

Run from the build/ directory:

./Radioactive_deacy_calculator

You’ll be prompted for:

• Z (protons)
• N (neutrons)
• Initial number of nuclei
• Total time (seconds)

Choose whether to save the plot (decay.png) or show it interactively.

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Example session (abridged)

Ploting Result

Troubleshooting

• Error: “Could not open half_life.csv”
  • Ensure you’re running from build/ and that half_life.csv exists there (not hidden as .half_life.csv).
• CMake cannot find Python or NumPy
  • Confirm Python 3, dev headers (e.g. python3-dev), and NumPy are installed. You can guide CMake with -DPython3_ROOT_DIR=/path/to/python.
• Linker errors referencing Python symbols
  • Install your distro’s Python dev package (e.g., Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python3-dev).
• Matplotlib import/runtime issues
  • Ensure Matplotlib is installed in the same Python environment CMake found, or choose to save plots to file when running headless.