Question

Carbon-14 has a half life of 5,770 years. A fossil was found that had 1/32 of its original Carbon-14 remaining. How old is the fossil?

Answer 1

Answer:

Considering the following case:

Carbon-14 has a half life of 5,770 years. A fossil was found that had 1/32 of its original Carbon-14 remaining.

The fossil is 28.850 years old.

Explanation:

The reason behind this is that in the first place we need to understand that 1/32 equals 1/2^5 or in other words 5 times. So we then have to multiply the half-life for 5 times and we will obtain 28,850 years as a result because the half-life for carbon-14 is 5,770 In our case it is different as in the majority of them because 5,730 is more often used as the reference value of half-life.