A wooden object from the site of an ancient temple has a carbon-14 activity of 10 counts/min compared with a reference piece of wood cut today that has an activity of 40 counts/min. If the half-life for carbon-14 is 5730 y, what is the age of the ancient wood object?

Age of the ancient wood object is 11460 years.

Explanation:

We know that half-life for carbon-14 is 5730 years. That means the activity of the sample will decrease to half every 5730 years.

Now we construct the following table:

activity (counts/min) age of the wooden object

40 0

20 5730

10 11460