Per trillion or 0.0000000001% of the total carbon in living things. More importantly, carbon-14 is unstable and has a half-life of approximately 5700 years. This means that, within the span of
But, as long as an organism is living, it keeps taking in and releasing carbon-14, so the level of
it in the organism, as small as it is, remains constant. Once an organism dies, however, it no
we know how much carbon-14 an organism had when it was
alive, as well as how long it takes
longer ingests carbon-14, so the level of carbon-14 in it drops due to radioactive decay. Because
5700 years, one-half of any amount of carbon will "decay" into another atom. In other words, if
Lesson Per
a
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1
Archeologists have several methods of determining the age of
recovered artifacts. One method is radioactive dating
All matter is made of atoms. Atoms, in turn, are made of protons,
neutrons, and electrons. An "element” is defined as an atom with
given number of protons, Carbon, for example, has exactly 6 protons,
Carbon atoms can, however, have different numbers of neutrons.
These are known as “isotopes" of carbon Carbon-12 has 6 neutrons,
carbon-13 has 7 neutrons, and carbon-14 has 8 neutrons. All
carbon-based life forms contain these different isotopes of carbon.
Carbon-12 and carbon-13 account for over 99% of all the carbon in
living things. Carbon-14. however, accounts for approximately 1 parz
Es
C
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you had 10 g of carbon-14 today, only 5 g would remain after 5700 years.
for that amount to become half of what it was, you can determine the age of the organism by
comparing these two values.
Use the information presented to create a function that will model the amount of carbon-14 in
a sample as a function of its age
. Create the model C(n) where is the amount of carbon-14 in
parts per quadrillion (1 part per trillion is 1000 parts per quadrillion) and n is the age of the
sample in half-lives. Graph the model.