Life in the Universe (4th Edition)
4th Edition
ISBN: 9780134089089
Author: Jeffrey O. Bennett, Seth Shostak
Publisher: PEARSON
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Chapter 4, Problem 54IF
Carbon-14 Dating. The half-life of carbon-14 is about 5700 years.
- a. You find a piece of cloth painted with organic dyes. By analyzing the dye in the cloth, you find that only 77% of the carbon-14 originally in the dye remains. When was the cloth painted?
- b. A well-preserved piece of wood found at an archaeological site has 6.2% of the carbon-14 that it must have had when it was living. Estimate when the wood was cut.
- c. Suppose a fossil is 570,000 years old, which is 100 half-lives of carbon-14. What fraction of its original carbon-14 would remain? Use your answer to explain why carbon-14 generally is not useful for dating fossils of this age.
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Chapter 4 Solutions
Life in the Universe (4th Edition)
Ch. 4 - Briefly describe three aspects of geology that are...Ch. 4 - What do we mean by the geological record? Why is...Ch. 4 - Describe the three basic types of rock and the...Ch. 4 - How are sedimentary strata made, and how do they...Ch. 4 - Describe the technique of radiometric dating, and...Ch. 4 - How do fossils form? Do most living organisms...Ch. 4 - Summarize the geological time scale. What are...Ch. 4 - Prob. 8RQCh. 4 - Briefly describe how outgassing led to the origin...Ch. 4 - What was the heavy bombardment, and what effect...
Ch. 4 - Briefly describe Earths core-mantle-crust...Ch. 4 - Briefly describe the conveyorlike action of plate...Ch. 4 - Describe how plate tectonics shapes important...Ch. 4 - What evidence do we have for the operation of...Ch. 4 - What are the three requirements for a planetary...Ch. 4 - Briefly describe the mechanism by which the...Ch. 4 - What has happened to most of the carbon dioxide...Ch. 4 - What are ice ages, and what may cause them? What...Ch. 4 - Briefly summarize the key ways in which geology is...Ch. 4 - How do we think the Moon formed, and what evidence...Ch. 4 - We can expect that if there are paleontologists a...Ch. 4 - Nearly all the rocks I found in the lava fields of...Ch. 4 - Prob. 23TYUCh. 4 - Although Earth contains its densest material in...Ch. 4 - If you had a time machine that dropped you off on...Ch. 4 - If there were no plate tectonics on Earth, our...Ch. 4 - Without the greenhouse effect, there probably...Ch. 4 - If nitrogen were a greenhouse gas, our planet...Ch. 4 - We can learn a lot about Earths early history by...Ch. 4 - Prob. 30TYUCh. 4 - A rocks type (igneous, metamorphic, or...Ch. 4 - To learn a rocks age, we must (a) determine its...Ch. 4 - Radiometric dating now allows us to determine...Ch. 4 - Earths oceans formed (a) during the late stages of...Ch. 4 - We learn about the heavy bombardment by studying...Ch. 4 - Earth has retained a lot of internal heat...Ch. 4 - Plate tectonics is best described as a process...Ch. 4 - Earth has far less atmospheric carbon dioxide than...Ch. 4 - If Earth had more greenhouse gases in its...Ch. 4 - Snowball Earth refers to (a) one of a series of...Ch. 4 - The Age of Earth. Some people still question...Ch. 4 - Dating Planetary Surfaces. We have discussed two...Ch. 4 - Earth Without Differentiation. Suppose Earth had...Ch. 4 - Earth Without Plate Tectonics. Suppose plate...Ch. 4 - Feedback Processes in the Atmosphere. As the Sun...Ch. 4 - Geological Time. Geological time scales are often...Ch. 4 - Dating Lunar Rocks. You are analyzing Moon rocks...Ch. 4 - Carbon-14 Dating. The half-life of carbon-14 is...Ch. 4 - Martian Meteorite. Some unusual meteorites thought...Ch. 4 - Internal vs. External Heating. In daylight, Earths...Ch. 4 - Plate Tectonics. Typical motions of one plate...Ch. 4 - More Plate Tectonics. Consider a seafloor...Ch. 4 - Plate Tectonics and Us. Based on what you learned...
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- What would happen to a life-form if the genetic information handed down to offspring was copied extremely inaccurately? How would that endanger the future of the life-form?arrow_forwardWhy do scientists generality think that liquid water is necessary for the origin of life?arrow_forwardCarbon-14 dating measures the ratio of carbon-14 not to its daughter, nitrogen-14, but instead to what isotope?arrow_forward
- What would happen to a life-form if the information handed down to offspring was always the same? How would that endanger the future of the life-form?arrow_forwardIf you represent Earth’s history by a line 1 m long, how long a segment would represent the 400 million years since life moved onto the land? How long a segment would represent the 4-million-year history of human life?arrow_forwardA radioactive nucleus has a half-life of 5108 years. Assuming that a sample of rock (say, in an asteroid) solidified right after the solar system formed, approximately what fraction of the radioactive element should be left in the rock today?arrow_forward
- 1. Calculate the age of the fossil given that the amount of 14C found in it is 92 percent of that in living tissue. Carbon-14 has a half life of 5730 years ?arrow_forwardA rock sample contains a radioactive isotope that has a half-life of 10,000 years. One-fourth (25%) of the parent isotope remains in a sample. How old is the sample?arrow_forwardA fossilized leaf contains 70% of its normal amount of carbon-14.(a) How old is the fossil? Use 5730 years as the half-life of carbon-14.(b) Using a graphing utility, graph the relation between the percentage of carbon-14 remaining and time.(c) Using INTERSECT, determine the time that elapses until one-fourth of the carbon-14 remains.(d) Verify the answer found in part (a).arrow_forward
- A fossilized leaf contains 70% Of its normal amount of carbon- 14. How old is the fossil? Use 5730 yesrs as the half-life of carbon- 14.arrow_forwardWhat describes using organisms that were only alive during a specific time period to estimate the unknown age of items? a. Radioactive dating Selected:b. Law of superposition This answer is incorrect. c. Relative dating d. Index fossilsarrow_forwardC^14, a form of carbon that is used to find the age of fossils has a half life of 5730 years. how much of a 10 gram sample is left after 13,000 years?arrow_forward
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