Potassium-argon dating is used to measure the age of rocks formed from cooled lava by determining the fraction of the original 40K remaining in a sample from the ratio of 40K:40Ar. Unusually, potassium-40 decays into both 40Ca (89.1% of the time) and 40Ar (10.9% of the time) with a half-life of 1:248 x 109 years. What is the calculated age of a sample in which the faction of 40K remaining was found to be 0.0043? Is this result physically plausible and why?

Potassium-argon dating is used to measure the age of rocks formed from cooled lava by determining the fraction of the original 40K remaining in a sample from the ratio of 40K:40Ar. Unusually, potassium-40 decays into both 40Ca (89.1% of the time) and 40Ar (10.9% of the time) with a half-life of 1:248 x 109 years. What is the calculated age of a sample in which the faction of 40K remaining was found to be 0.0043? Is this result physically plausible and why?

Similar questions

Potassium-argon dating is used to measure the age of rocks formed from cooled lava by determining the fraction of the original 40K remaining in a sample from the ratio of 40K:40Ar. Unusually, potassium-40 decays into both 40Ca (89.1% of the time) and 40Ar (10.9% of the time) with a half-life of 1:248 x 10^9 years. 1. Write out balanced nuclear equations for these two decay processes. 2. Calculate the specific activity of 40K.
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