a 5700 year old bone has 10 c14 atoms.
how much c 14 did it have originally?
To determine how much C14 the bone originally had, we need to make use of the concept of carbon dating. Carbon dating relies on the fact that C14, a radioactive isotope of carbon, decays at a predictable rate over time. By measuring the amount of C14 remaining in a sample and comparing it to the amount of stable C12, we can estimate the age of the sample.
The half-life of C14 is approximately 5730 years. This means that every 5730 years, the amount of C14 in a sample is reduced by half. Since the bone is 5700 years old, it has undergone approximately one half-life.
If the bone currently contains 10 C14 atoms, we can conclude that the original amount of C14 would have been double that, or 20 C14 atoms.
To summarize, the bone originally had 20 C14 atoms before it began to decay, and now it has only 10 C14 atoms left after 5700 years.