Tritium (H-3) has a half-life of 12.3 years. How old is a bottle of olive oil if the tritium content is 25% that of a new sample of olive oil? Do you know how you got that answer?

Question

australopithecus · Answer

use exponential decay function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay it is listed in this article you should be able to figure it out Half life = 12.3 years Original amount of tritium in Olive oil = 1 Final amount of tritium in Olive oil = 25%/100 = 0.25 t = time = ? Just use the formula listed in the wikipedia article and you will get your answer, you need to solve for t. I hope you know how to use logarithms

australopithecus · Answer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm

australopithecus · Answer

the rules for manipulating them are listed here

superflytyguy · Answer

Thank you so much

australopithecus · Answer

no problem if you have any questions feel free to ask, there are probably a million videos on exponential decay on youtube as well this is definitely something that keeps coming up in school.