Carbon Dating In Exercises 79–82, you are given the ratio of carbon isotopes to carbon atoms in a fossil. Use the information to estimate the age of the fossil. In living organic material, the ratio of radioactive carbon isotopes to the total number of carbon atoms is about 1 to 1012. (See Example 3 in Section 4.1.) When organic material dies, its radioactive carbon isotopes begin to decay, with a half-life of about 5715 years. So, the ratio R of carbon isotopes to carbon-14 atoms is modeled by
To calculate: The age of the fossil when the ratio of carbon isotopes to carbon atoms in a fossil is
Given Information:
The ratio of carbon isotopes to carbon atoms in a fossil is
Formula used:
The property of logarithms for the expression
Calculation:
Consider the provided information that the ratio of carbon isotopes to carbon atoms in a fossil is
Consider the equation,
Here,
Calculate the age of fossil by substituting the value of R in the equation as,
Divide both sides by
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