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)
O 2 grams
O 10 grams
• 40 grams
• 5 grams
The correct answer is 10 grams.
To find out how many grams of carbon-14 the wood sample will have after 5,700 years, we need to understand the concept of half-life and how it applies to carbon-14.
The half-life of carbon-14 is the time it takes for half of the carbon-14 in a sample to decay. In this case, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, meaning that every 5,700 years, half of the carbon-14 in the sample will decay.
Since the initial sample of wood has 20 grams of carbon-14, after one half-life (5,700 years), half of the carbon-14 will decay, leaving 10 grams. After another half-life (5,700 more years), half of the remaining 10 grams will decay, leaving 5 grams.
Therefore, the wood sample will have 5 grams of carbon-14 after 5,700 years.
So, the correct answer is:
• 5 grams
To solve this problem, we can use the concept of a half-life of carbon-14. The half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of a radioactive substance to decay. In this case, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years.
Since the sample of wood starts with 20 grams of carbon-14 when it is alive, after one half-life (5,700 years), the amount of carbon-14 remaining will be half of the original amount.
So, after 5,700 years, the sample of wood will have 10 grams of carbon-14. Therefore, the correct answer is:
- 10 grams.