A human skeleton is found in an archeological dig. Carbon dating is implemented to determine how old the skeleton is by using the equation y= e^-0.0001210t , where y is the percent of radiocarbon remaining when the skeleton is t years old.

Question

A human skeleton is found in an archeological dig. Carbon dating is implemented to determine how old the skeleton is by using the equation y= e^-0.0001210t , where y is the percent of radiocarbon remaining when the skeleton is t years old.

If the skeleton is expected to be 1500 years old, what percentage of carbon should be present?

Answer 1

not really calculus - just Algebra II

just plug in the value for t.
e^(-0.0001210*1500) = 0.834 or 83.4%

Answer 2

Okay I think I kinda get it now. I’m going to post a similar question and try to solve it to see if I got the hang of how to solve this

Answer 3

To determine the percentage of carbon that should be present in the skeleton, we can substitute the given age (t = 1500 years) into the equation for y.

The equation y = e^(-0.0001210t) represents the percent of radiocarbon remaining when the skeleton is t years old.

Substituting t = 1500 into the equation, we get:

y = e^(-0.0001210 * 1500)

Now, we can calculate this using a scientific calculator or programming language with exponential function support:

y ≈ e^(-0.1815)

Using the value of e (approximately 2.718), we can calculate:

y ≈ 2.718^(-0.1815)

y ≈ 0.834

Therefore, the percentage of carbon that should be present in the skeleton is approximately 83.4%.