Awooden object from the site of an ancient temple has a carbon-14 activity of 10 counts/min compared with a reference piece of wood cut today that has an activity of 40 counts/min. if the half-life for carbon-14 is 5730 y, what is the age of the ancient wood object?

Age of the ancient wood object is 11460 years.

Explanation:

We know that half-life for carbon-14 is 5730 years. That means the activity of the sample will decrease to half every 5730 years.

Now we construct the following table:

activity (counts/min)        age of the wooden object

      40                                                  0

      20                                               5730

      10                                                11460

the answer is 0.8m.

by: nicholas