Chapter 17, Problem 81E

Interpretation Introduction

Interpretation:

Determine the age of the skull that has a carbon-14 content of $\text{1}\text{.563 \%}$ of that found in living organisms.

Concept Introduction:

Different nuclides have different rate of radioactive decay.

The time in which any radioactive substance remained half of its quantity is known as half-life of that compound and represented by $t_{1/2}$.

The percentage of carbon-14 can be calculated as follows:

$\text{\% C}-14=\frac{1}{2^N}\times 100$ …… (1)

Here, $N$ is the number of half-lives.