Chapter 17, Problem 82E

Interpretation Introduction

Interpretation: The life of mammoth is to be calculated which has carbon-14 content of $12.50\%$ of that found in living organism.

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.