Question

The half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years. therefore, 5730 years after being cut from a tree, a piece of wood will have 50.0% of the carbon-14 that it had originally. what percentage of the original carbon-14 will remain in the wood after another 5730 years?

Answer 1

For this problem, we use the formula for radioactive decay which is expressed as follows:

An = Aoe^-kt

where An is the amount left after time t, Ao is the initial amount and k is a constant.

We can use the equation above to find the percent of the original substance at a given time. However, the time given here is equal to the half life of C-14. So the percent left would be 50% or half the original.