Decaying Problem and the Age of a Sample.

[meganyew]

Homework Statement

a living speciman in equilibrium with the atmosphere contains one atom of 14C half life of 5730 for every 7.7x10^11 stable carbon atoms. An archaelogical sample of wood cellulose C12H22O11 contains 21.0mg of carbon. when the sample is placed inside a sheilded beta counter with 88 percent efficiency.837 counts are accumulated in one week. We wish to find the age of the rock.
a) what is the number of carbon atoms?
b)find the number of carbon 14 atoms
c)find the decay constant for carbon-14 in inverse seconds
d)find the initial number of decays per week just after the speciman has died
e)find the corrected number of decays per week from the current sample
f)find the time in years since the speciman died




For a third level university course.

 

[grey_earl]

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