Question

An archeologist finds a skull in Piltdown Park in England. He discovers that only 3% of the original amount of carbon-14 is still present in the skull. If the decay constant for carbon-14 is 11×10−5 , estimate the age of the skull.

Answer 1

To estimate the age of the skull, we use the formula for exponential decay and plug in the given values. This gives us an estimate of the age of the skull.

Step-by-step explanation:

To estimate the age of the skull, we need to use the formula for exponential decay. The formula is: N(t) = N0 * e^(-k*t), where N(t) is the amount of carbon-14 at time t, N0 is the original amount of carbon-14, k is the decay constant, and t is the time.

In this case, the archeologist found that only 3% of the original amount of carbon-14 is still present in the skull. This means that N(t)/N0 = 0.03. We can solve for t using the formula: t = -ln(0.03)/k.

Plugging in the given value for k (11x10^-5), we get t = -ln(0.03)/(11x10^-5). Calculating this value gives us an estimate of the age of the skull.