I have californium-251 with a half life of 898 years. I constructed an equation where y is the percent of californium is left, which is ln(0.5)/898. I found that if there is 23% of californium left in an organism, then it is 1904 years old. Now, how do i graph this as an exponential function. What do i plug in to y= a*e^(k(x))? Thank you!
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you've got the right formula.
and you've calculated k correctly
so
for y = % of a, just let a = 1,
then plot
y = e^(ln(0.5)/898 × x)
or
y = (e^(ln(0.5)/898))^x
≈ 0.999228419^x
and plot
y = 0.23
then
the intersection of those two plots will be
(1904, 0.23)
see
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plo…
♣♦
and you've calculated k correctly
so
for y = % of a, just let a = 1,
then plot
y = e^(ln(0.5)/898 × x)
or
y = (e^(ln(0.5)/898))^x
≈ 0.999228419^x
and plot
y = 0.23
then
the intersection of those two plots will be
(1904, 0.23)
see
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plo…
♣♦