Raphael D. answered • 03/02/16
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You just found a fossil of a sea creature. You measure the C14 content and find that it has 15 moles of C14. Some other calculation tells you that at the time of this creatures death , there were 30moles of C14. How old is the fossil ? C14 has a half life of 5730 years.
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C14 decays exponentially during time. Namely if we got some No amount of radioactive atoms, after a half life, 5730 years in our case, No falls to half, i.e. to No/2.
In this problem, also the initial amount of 30 moles falls down to 15, meaning the age of the fossil is
just 5730 years.
We can stop here.
message if questions.
good luck:)
