Question

The half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years. Assuming you start with 100% of carbon-14, what is the expression for the percent, P(t), of carbon-14 that remains in an organism that is t years old and what is the percent of carbon-14 remaining (rounded to the nearest whole percent) in an organism estimated to be 20,000 years old?

Answer 1

The general expression would be:

`P(t) = ((1)/(2))^{ (t)/(5730) }`
In an organism that is 20,000 years old (t = 20000), we would expect:

`P(t) = ((1)/(2) )^( (20000)/(5730) ) = 0.08898`
This menas there would be around 8.898% of carbon-14 remaining in the organism.