A fossilized bone contains about 65% of its original carbon-14. to the nearest hundred years, how old is the bone

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Trace Green

Chemistry

9 June, 18:07

A fossilized bone contains about 65% of its original carbon-14. to the nearest hundred years, how old is the bone

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Braxton Gill · Answer 1

3600 years.

Since 65% of the carbon-14 is remaining, we need to get the logarithm to base 2 of 0.65 to determine how many half lives have expired. So: log (0.65) / log (2) = - 0.187086643/0.301029996 = - 0.621488377

So we know that 0.621488377 half-lives has gone by to the bone sample. Now we just need to multiply by the half-life of carbon-14 which is 5730 years. So: 0.621488377 * 5730 = 3561.128399 years. Rounding to the nearest 100 years gives us 3600 years.