help need lots of help thanks

Question

The half-life of a radioactive isotope is the time it takes for a quantity of the isotope to be reduced to half its initial mass. Starting with 210 grams of a radioactive isotope, how much will be left after half-lives?Use the calculator provided and round your answer to the nearest gram.

Answer 1

The equation you would use in this case would be f(t) = ab^t, where a = initial amount, b = growth/decay factor, and t = time. Since your initial amount is 210, a = 210. Also, since this is a half-life problem, the b-term = 1/2 or 0.5.

So the equation you would use is y = 210(0.5)^t.

You can then plug in any value of time to get the half-life after a certain amount of time, since I'm not exactly sure "how much will be left after half-lives."

I hope this helps!