A student in Greece discovers a pottery bowl that contains 62% of its original amount of c-14. Find the age of the pottery bowl to the nearest year

The correct answer is 4780.

For this problem, we use the formula for radioactive decay which is expressed as follows:

An = Aoe^-kt

where An is the amount left after time t, Ao is the initial amount and k is a constant.

We calculate as follows:

The half-life of C-14 is 5730 years:

An = Aoe^-kt

0.5 = e^-k (5730)

k = 1.21x10^-4

An = Aoe^-kt

.62 = e^-1.21x10^-4 (t)

t = 3951 years