The decay of radioactive elements can sometimes be used to date events from Earth’s past. In a living organism, the ratio of radioactive carbon, carbon-14, to ordinary carbon stays fairly constant during the lifetime of the organism, being approximately equal to the ratio in the organism’s atmosphere at the time. After the organism’s death, however, no new carbon is ingested, and the proportion of carbon-14 in the organism’s remains decreases as the carbon-14 decays. Scientists who do carbon-14 dating often use a figure of 5730 years for its half-life. Find the age of a sample in which 10% of the radioactive nuclei originally present have decayed.
The decay of radioactive elements can sometimes be used to date events from Earth’s past. In a living organism, the ratio of radioactive carbon, carbon-14, to ordinary carbon stays fairly constant during the lifetime of the organism, being approximately equal to the ratio in the organism’s atmosphere at the time. After the organism’s death, however, no new carbon is ingested, and the proportion of carbon-14 in the organism’s remains decreases as the carbon-14 decays. Scientists who do carbon-14 dating often use a figure of 5730 years for its half-life. Find the age of a sample in which 10% of the radioactive nuclei originally present have decayed.
Chapter10: Exponential And Logarithmic Functions
Section10.5: Solve Exponential And Logarithmic Equations
Problem 10.88TI: Researchers recorded that a certain bacteria population declined from 700,000 to 400,000 in 5 hours...
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The decay of radioactive elements can sometimes be used to date
events from Earth’s past. In a living organism, the ratio of radioactive carbon, carbon-14,
to ordinary carbon stays fairly constant during the lifetime of the organism, being approximately
equal to the ratio in the organism’s atmosphere at the time. After the organism’s
death, however, no new carbon is ingested, and the proportion of carbon-14 in the organism’s
remains decreases as the carbon-14 decays.
Scientists who do carbon-14 dating often use a figure of 5730 years for its half-life. Find
the age of a sample in which 10% of the radioactive nuclei originally present have decayed.
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