A human skeleton is found in an archeological dig. Carbon dating is implemented to determine how old the skeleton is by using the equation y= e^-0.0001210t , where y is the percent of radiocarbon remaining when the skeleton is t years old.
If the skeleton is expected to be 1500 years old, what percentage of carbon should be present?
not really calculus - just Algebra II
just plug in the value for t.
e^(-0.0001210*1500) = 0.834 or 83.4%
Okay I think I kinda get it now. Iām going to post a similar question and try to solve it to see if I got the hang of how to solve this
To determine the percentage of carbon that should be present in the skeleton, we can substitute the given age (t = 1500 years) into the equation for y.
The equation y = e^(-0.0001210t) represents the percent of radiocarbon remaining when the skeleton is t years old.
Substituting t = 1500 into the equation, we get:
y = e^(-0.0001210 * 1500)
Now, we can calculate this using a scientific calculator or programming language with exponential function support:
y ā e^(-0.1815)
Using the value of e (approximately 2.718), we can calculate:
y ā 2.718^(-0.1815)
y ā 0.834
Therefore, the percentage of carbon that should be present in the skeleton is approximately 83.4%.