Decay chain

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a toy block tower that you want to knock down. Let's say you can't just knock it over with your hand, so you have to use something else.

You decide to use a ball to hit the bottom block, but instead of just hitting it once and knocking the whole tower down, the block breaks into two smaller blocks.

Now you have two smaller blocks that are easier to knock down, so you use the ball again and hit one of them. That block also breaks into two smaller blocks.

This keeps happening over and over again, each time you hit a block it breaks into two smaller ones. This is kind of like a decay chain!

In the real world, there are certain things that can break apart in a similar way. We call these things "radioactive isotopes".

Each time one of these isotopes "decays" or breaks apart, it turns into something new, called a "daughter product". That daughter product may also be radioactive, so it can decay too and turn into something else, and so on.

This process can keep happening over and over again, sometimes for thousands of years, until eventually the original radioactive isotope has broken down into a stable, non-radioactive element.

So just like knocking down toy blocks, this decay chain process keeps going until everything has been broken down into smaller, more stable pieces.