Homework Help: Alg2

Posted by Rock on Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:09pm.

An anthropologist finds there is so little remaining Carbon-14 in a prehistoric bone that instruments cannot measure it. This means that there is less than 0.5% of the amount of Carbon-14 the bones would have contained when the person was alive. How long ago did the person die? Round your answer to the nearest thousand. (22,000, etc)

Alg2 - Steve, Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 5:16am
Find the half-life of C14. Call it n years

2^(-t/n) < .005
-t/n < ln(.005)/ln(2) = -7.64
t > 7.64n

check: 2^-7.64 = .005013, so after 7.64 half-lives, we are down to .5% of the original.

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