The decay of radioactive elements can sometimes be used to date events from Earth’s past. In a living organism, the ratio of radioactive carbon, carbon-14, to ordinary carbon stays fairly constant during the lifetime of the organism, being approximately equal to the ratio in the organism’s atmosphere at the time. After the organism’s death, however, no new carbon is ingested, and the proportion of carbon-14 in the organism’s remains decreases as the carbon-14 decays. Scientists who do carbon-14 dating often use a figure of 5730 years for its half-life. Find the age of a sample in which 10% of the radioactive nuclei originally present have decayed.

Calculus: Early Transcendentals
8th Edition
ISBN:9781285741550
Author:James Stewart
Publisher:James Stewart
Chapter1: Functions And Models
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 1RCC: (a) What is a function? What are its domain and range? (b) What is the graph of a function? (c) How...
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The decay of radioactive elements can sometimes be used to date
events from Earth’s past. In a living organism, the ratio of radioactive carbon, carbon-14,
to ordinary carbon stays fairly constant during the lifetime of the organism, being approximately
equal to the ratio in the organism’s atmosphere at the time. After the organism’s
death, however, no new carbon is ingested, and the proportion of carbon-14 in the organism’s
remains decreases as the carbon-14 decays.
Scientists who do carbon-14 dating often use a figure of 5730 years for its half-life. Find
the age of a sample in which 10% of the radioactive nuclei originally present have decayed.

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