Concept explainers
Radiocarbon dating: Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon that decays by emitting a beta particle. In the earth’s atmosphere, approximately one carbon atom in 1012 is carbon-14. Living organisms exchange carbon with the atmosphere, so this same ratio holds for living tissue. After an organism dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and its carbon-14 ratio decreases exponentially with time. The rate at which beta particles are emitted from a given mass of carbon is proportional to the carbon-14 ratio, so this rate decreases exponentially with time as well. By measuring the rate of beta emissions in a sample of tissue, the time since the death of the organism can be estimated. Specifically, it is known that t years after death, the number of beta particle emissions occurring in any given time interval from 1 g of carbon follows a Poisson distribution with rate
An archaeologist finds a small piece of charcoal from an ancient campsite. The charcoal contains 1 g of carbon.
a. Unknown to the archaeologist, the charcoal is 11,000 years old. What is the true value of the emission rate λ?
b. The archaeologist plans to count the number X of emissions in a 25 minute interval. Find the
c. The archaeologist then plans to estimate λ with
d. What value for
e. What value for
f. What is the probability that the age estimate is correct to within ±1000 years?
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Statistics for Engineers and Scientists
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