Carbon-14 is used to determine the time an organism was living. The amount of carbon-14 an organism has is constant with the atmosphere, but when an organism dies the carbon-14 decays at a half-life of 5,730 years. If an archeologist measured the amount of carbon-14 in an organism and it was 25% of the total amount of atmospheric C-14, what is the age of the organism? 1432.5 years 5,730 years 11,460 years 17,190 years

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Physics

Ashlyn Walls

31 May, 03:39

Carbon-14 is used to determine the time an organism was living. The amount of carbon-14 an organism has is constant with the atmosphere, but when an organism dies the carbon-14 decays at a half-life of 5,730 years. If an archeologist measured the amount of carbon-14 in an organism and it was 25% of the total amount of atmospheric C-14, what is the age of the organism? 1432.5 years 5,730 years 11,460 years 17,190 years

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Schmidt · Answer 1

25% is 1/4 of the C-14 left. Well we know that 1/2 * 1/2 is 1/4 so there has been 2 half-lives length of time used. So we take the half-life time and multiply it by 2.

5730 * 2 = 11460 years or C