A somewhat more complicated scheme is shown here: the decay of the nuclide Au which can be produced by irradiating natural gold in a nuclear reactor. Au decays via beta decay to one of two excited states or to the ground state of the mercury isotope Hg. In the figure, mercury is to the right of gold, since the atomic number of gold is 79, that of mercury is 80. The excited states decay after very short times (2.5 and 23 ps, resp.; 1 picosecond is a millionth of a millionth of a second) to the ground state.