{"id":8216,"date":"2015-02-04T18:21:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T18:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=8216"},"modified":"2018-01-27T22:15:20","modified_gmt":"2018-01-27T22:15:20","slug":"radioactive-dating-half-life-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/radioactive-dating-half-life-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"Radioactive dating:  half life, continued"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>The tutor continues about the phenomenon of half life and one of its well-known applications.<\/h1>\n<p>In my <a href=\"?p=8204\">post from yesterday<\/a> I introduced the topic of carbon dating and the principles that make it feasible.  Today I&#8217;ll give a few more technical details to facilitate its mathematical use.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example:<\/strong>  A sample taken from a mammoth bone is found to contain 17% of the radioactivity of a freshly dead bone.  Estimate the time of the mammoth&#8217;s death.<\/p>\n<p>Solution:<\/p>\n<p>First, convert the percent to a decimal:  17%=0.17<\/p>\n<p>The general formula for time since death, t, is<\/p>\n<p>t=5730*(log(decimal remaining)\/(log0.5))<\/p>\n<p>We plug our decimal remaining, 0.17, into the formula:<\/p>\n<p>t=5730*(log(0.17)\/log(0.5))=14648 years<\/p>\n<p>By the reckoning of the carbon dating process, the mammoth died 14648 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, the radioactive form of carbon is carbon-14, whereas the (predominant) stable form is carbon-12:)<\/p>\n<p>Jack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, <\/a> Campbell River, BC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tutor continues about the phenomenon of half life and one of its well-known applications. In my post from yesterday I introduced the topic of carbon dating and the principles that make it feasible. Today I&#8217;ll give a few more &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/radioactive-dating-half-life-continued\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Radioactive dating:  half life, continued<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[485,219,3,7,10],"tags":[486,488],"class_list":["post-8216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-biology","category-math","category-physics","category-sciences","tag-carbon-dating","tag-half-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8216"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28838,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216\/revisions\/28838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}