Use this paragraph: The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years. A certain sample of wood has 20 grams of carbon-14 when it is alive.
How many grams of carbon will it have after 5,700 years?
(1 point)
Responses
2 grams
2 grams
40 grams
40 grams
10 grams
10 grams
5 grams
10 grams
To determine the amount of carbon-14 remaining after 5,700 years, we need to apply the concept of half-life. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, which means that every 5,700 years, half of the carbon-14 in a sample will decay.
Since the initial amount of carbon-14 in the sample is 20 grams, after one half-life (5,700 years), half of it will have decayed. This means that after 5,700 years, the sample will have 10 grams of carbon-14 remaining.
Therefore, the correct answer is 10 grams.
To determine how many grams of carbon-14 a certain sample of wood will have after 5,700 years, we need to understand the concept of half-life and apply it.
The half-life of carbon-14 is defined as the time it takes for half of the original amount of carbon-14 in a sample to decay. In this case, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years.
Since the problem states that the sample initially has 20 grams of carbon-14 when it is alive, we can use the half-life to calculate how much will remain after 5,700 years.
After the first half-life (5,700 years), half of the initial amount of carbon-14 will have decayed. So, after 5,700 years, the sample will have 10 grams of carbon-14 remaining.
To find out how much carbon-14 will remain after another 5,700 years (a total of two half-lives), we apply the half-life concept again. We take the remaining 10 grams from the first half-life and divide it in half to get 5 grams.
Therefore, after 5,700 years, the certain sample of wood will have 5 grams of carbon-14 remaining.
So, the correct answer is: 5 grams.