Question

Situation:

Find the age of the skull to the nearest year,
Enter the correct answer.
A hiker in Africa discovers a skull that
contains 32% of its original amount of C-
14.
DONE
N = Noekt
00000
No = inital amount of C-14 (at time
t = 0)
N = amount of C-14 at time t
K = 0.0001
t = time, in years

Answer 1

11,394 years old

Explanation:

The equation looks like this:

`N=N_(0)e^(kt)`

The only thing left up to us is to decide what value should go in for N. Since we are told that 32% of the original amount is what the hiker finds, we are operating in percentages. Before any decomposition took place, the amount of skull was 100%. Filling in now we have:

`100=32e^(.0001t)`

Divide both sides by 32 to get

`3.125=e^(.0001t)`

In order to get that t out of the exponential position that it is currently in, we will take the natural log of both sides, since a natural log "undoes" an e (that is because the base of a natural log is e). Taking the ln of both sides and utilizing that rule for natural logs and e's gives us:

ln(3.125) = .0001t

Divide both sides by .0001 to get that

t = 11,394 years